Over the Rainbow: - Wrestling With Angels

as spouse and access to the hospital to visit a dying partner. Seeking to change this, lesbians
and gay men created their own weddings and ceremonies. In 1993 at the third March on
Washington for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Rights three-thousand couples gathered for a mass
wedding. That same year the Hawaii Supreme Court, in response to an appeal from a lower
court decision denying marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples, ruled that the prohibition
of same-sex marriages constituted discrimination and was probably unconstitutional
(GA,1996:231,235).
The Lambda Legal Defense and Educational Fund had worked to lay a groundwork for
winning the right for gays to marry. In 1995 they announced the formation of its Marriage
Project to serve as a national coordinator and clearinghouse. A network of volunteer
attorneys, law professors, and law students were mobilized to research legal arguments against
backlash. The Project developed the Marriage Resolution: “ Because marriage is a
fundamental right under our Constitution, and because the Constitution guarantees equal
protection under the law, RESOLVED, the State should permit gay and lesbian couples to marry
and share fully and equally in the rights and responsibilities of marriage” (GA1996:258).
Hawaii Considers Gay Marriage
When Hawaii became the first state to move toward gay marriage, other states and the
Federal Government wrestled with the possibility that through the U.S. Constitution’s “full faith
and credit” clause they would be required to recognize same-sex marriages performed in
Hawaii. In 1996, Congress adopted the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) with votes of
342 to 67 in the House and 85 to 14 in the Senate. DOMA was signed by President Clinton on
Sept. 21, 1996. DOMA defined marriage for purposes of federal law. The “word ‘marriage’
means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word
‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife” (Advocate.com,
2009; Goldberg, 1996; DOMA watch, 2008).
In 1998, the Hawaiian movement toward same-sex marriage was rescinded when Hawaii
and Alaska passed constitutional amendments supported by approximately 70% of the voters in
each state to ensure that marriage could not be redefined by judges in the court systems
(Daniels, 2000).
Vermont Recognizes Gay Unions
Vermont became the first state in the U.S. to recognize homosexual ‘unions’ in July of 2000
when the Vermont Supreme Court required the Vermont legislature to either grant marital
status to homosexual couples or institute statewide domestic-partnership. By May of 2001
Over the Rainbow: The Gay Battle for Social Reorganization of America. 2010
Dr. M. L. Coppock
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