DOMA is Down

So the news has hit Asia and I can't help but feel both ecstatic and sad at the same time. Defence of Marriage Act has officially been repelled by the United States Supreme Court, sweeping over two-decades of institutional discrimination away in one sweeping move. Even better, widespread public and political support of the measure means that it is unlikely the United States legislature will ever be able to get another federal law like this one onto the books.

My Facebook and Gmail Inbox has been brimming with congratulations, explosions of happiness and lengthy declarations of support. However all have been coloured with the same running theme...

Now you can come home...

Yes, the chances for us to return to the United States as a couple protected under the law instead of separate beings subjected to discrimination and different rules designed to separate us, has just been increased by leaps and bounds.

Are we going to be boarding a plane right now and heading back to the States... no...

Unfortunately, I am one of thousands of Americans who when given the choice between being separated from their foreign-born significant other or going abroad with them, I chose abroad to stay with the man I loved. The mass exodus of bi-national LGBT-couples returning is not going to happen tomorrow, it can't... because while we'd love to return to grand ole' America, we are also Human beings... we have jobs, homes, bills and uprooting that all, picking up everything and returning them to the States is not something that can be done lightly and not without an immense amount of forethought.

Yes, I left the country very abruptly but we can consider that fortune of destiny. I had just left a job with a start up I really wasn't enjoying (I was running the fine line between over-worked and apathy to said work), decided to downgrade the Manhattan apartment when rents began to rise and was dealing with the fact that my boyfriend's work visa had expired. That was the fate's aligning in my favour.

In Singapore however I have taken a job with a company I find myself enjoying immensely, gotten a nearby apartment who's rent is lower than New York's by miles and have begun to build a small group of friends in this country... now the fates are not in my favour.

But while this is a sad moment for many of my readers who I count among my friends and were rooting for my speedy return to States, it is more of a time to root for the fact that we can now return as a legal couple, protected under the law like never before in our nation's history.

And we all have Edith 'Edie' Windsor and Thea Spyer to thank for that.

Just like my previous post Defense of our (Gay)Marriage Aspirations from almost three-months ago, let's have a quick history lesson. Listen up kiddies, cause this should be filed away with such historical civil rights achievements like the Stonewall Riots, Loving v. Virginia and almost every other great civil rights victory from Rosa Parks to Daniel Savage.

In 2007, these two New York residence, married in Toronto after more than 40-years together. Tragically Spyer passed away in 2009, just as New York legally recognized same-sex marriage performed in other jurisdictions. Spyer left her entire estate to her widow... who had to pay $363,000 in federal estate taxes for the right to inherit her wife's estate.

Here's a critical thing to pay attention to, for heterosexual couples, no taxes are owed if the spouse inherits less than $3.5 million. Since DOMA refuses the government to see same-sex couples as not married under federal estate laws and as such, the change of property regardless if they are willed to another is seen as a transfer of ownership and not inheriting to a spouse.

Windsor paid the amount... and then followed it up by suing the federal government for discriminating against her.

With her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan through the ACLU and ran the case through the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York which ruled that section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional. Though she had won Windsor pushed on and when the Justice Department attempted to file notice on the appeal, the Second Circuit Court upheld the ruling again. It was the first federal court of appeals decision to hold that laws that classify people based on sexual orientation should be subject to intermediate scrutiny. Finally Windsor filed petition for the Supreme Court, the highest court in the country, to argue that DOMA violated the Fifth Amendment's right of equal protection.

In a narrow vote in favour, the Supreme Court found section 3 of DOMA to be unconstitutional, stating "as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment." Justice Anthony Kennedy voted in favour of repelling the law, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia and Samuel Alito voted in dissent to keep the law.

And in concurrence, Hollingsworth v. Perry nullified Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that rendered previously legal same-sex marriage in California illegal. In 30 days post its nullification, same-sex marriage will again be legal in California, raising the number of states where same-sex marriage is legal to thirteen. Now LGBT couples can wed in California, Connecticut, Delaware, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, the District of Columbia and five Native American tribes.

With the support of President Obama, the first sitting president to come out in favour of same-sex marriage, a widespread ideological split in the Republican Party who had originally made opposition to same-sex marriage a party platform and 55% public support of same-sex marriage, it is expected that another law like DOMA to again re-establish a federal law against homosexual unions will now be almost impossible, if not subject to much stricter legal review before it ever gets close to vote.

And while we now exist in a legal patchwork, where certain laws and rights exist in some states and not in others, it sets a legal precedence in favour of same-sex marriage, the same precedence that DOMA tried to squash in 1996 when Hawaii was considering such laws in favour.

Gay married couples will soon be able to apply for social security and survivor benefits, file jointly for federal return taxes, gain employee benefits for the care of sick spouses, children, parents or in-laws, gain health insurance coverage and especially in the case of Ms Windsor, estate taxes. Immigration laws will of course follow, but in the interim, we are all existing in a legal free-fall to see where the issue eventually lands. The federal government is expected to pay back all the money they took from her... plus interest.

And that kiddies is the end of our story... for now...

Until next time, this is AngMoh, cheering the homeland on from far across the Pacific and wishing his fellows some luck in the next big step in the Gay Civil Rights Movement and a hope to arrive in time to see it achieve complete fruition.