Glenn Greenwald
Thursday Nov. 6, 2008 07:32 EST
An answer to Proposition 8: Repealing DOMA
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/11/06/doma/The most potent ingredient making Tuesday's election bittersweet is the apparent passage of Proposition 8 in California. It's one thing for a state to decide in advance not to allow same-sex marriages. It's another thing entirely to watch a state strip a targeted group of citizens of the already vested right to marry.
Gay marriage is still a big leap for the country -- even as recently as 10 years ago, it's something that was barely discussed, and the idea even engendered vehement debates among gay people (Andrew Sullivan's advocacy of gay marriage in his 1996 book, Virtually Normal, sparked as much opposition from gay activists as from anyone else). So it's unsurprising that it will occur incrementally and there will be defeats along the way. Still, the retroactive rescission of vested marriage rights makes the enactment of Proposition 8 a particularly toxic episode.
