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Bar Association Vows to Fight DOMAby Kilian MelloyMonday Aug 10, 2009 The membership of the American Bar Association, a professional organization for lawyers, has approved a resolution supporting the repeal of at least part of legislative language contained in the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a 1996 law that denies gay and lesbian families any recognition on the federal level--even if they are married in any of the six states that currently extend marriage equality to everyone.
An August 4 article posted by CBS Broadcasting reported that the resolution was passed Aug. 3 at an ABA meeting that took place in Chicago.
The resolution, which was carried by voice vote, seeks the end of the provision in DOMA that excludes married same-sex couples from access to federal benefits, such as Social Security, that are available to married heterosexuals.
Anti-gay Web site OneNewsNow posted an article saying that the ABA was "meddling" in marriage and predicting an exodus from the Association’s membership.
The article drew on comments made by Mat Staver, who serves the religious conservative school Liberty University as dean of the institution’s law school.
Staver, the article said, opined that the issue of marriage equality and federal recognition for gay and lesbian families fell outside the purview of the practice of law.
Staver also claimed that many in the ABA’s membership find marriage equality a troubling issue, and likened a predicted massive loss of membership to an earlier alleged dip in the ABA’s membership when the group espoused reproductive freedoms.
"Many of the ABA members actually left the American Bar Association a number of years ago when it began to intrude into the area of abortion," the article quoted Staver as saying.
However, Staver clarified that such a mass exodus might not take place unless the ABA takes on the definition of marriage, which DOMA restricts on the federal level to heterosexual couples.
The ABA only voted to resolve that federal benefits should be made available to gay and lesbian couples who are already married.
"Now, if it starts to go as it looks like it will on the issue of marriage--even though right now it’s kind of the edges of marriage relating to the benefits, not the essence of marriage in terms of its definition--I think it’s going to alienate more lawyers who eventually will withdraw from the American Bar Association," Staver said, according to the site’s posting.
Kilian Melloy reviews media, conducts interviews, and writes commentary for EDGEBoston, where he also serves as Assistant Arts Editor.
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