As the United States woke up and logged into their various social media outlets, they were greeted with red and pink. No, Valentine’s Day has long been over (thank goodness); rather, these signs of red and pink were part of a national movement sparked by the Human Rights Campaign to promote marriage equality in the face of the Supreme Court’s oral arguments for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California’s Proposition 8 (Prop 8).
Facebook and Twitter users changed their profile pictures to a red and pink version of the logo associated with the Human Rights Campaign, one of the primary advocacy groups for LGBT individuals in the United States. There are those who say that social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter are a glib waste of time, but the extent to which this particular red and pink equal sign logo took hold (over 45,000 people had “shared” the image on Facebook by Tuesday afternoon) demonstrates just how prevalent social media is in the fight towards human and civil rights (and political issues in general) in the twenty-first century.
To fully understand the significance of this image and what this logo fully connotes, it is critical to understand what DOMA and Prop 8 are. While the United States Supreme Court justices gave their oral arguments for these two legal provisions on Tuesday March 26th and Wednesday March 27th respectively, they will not fully rule upon the constitutionality of DOMA and Prop 8 until June. Below are the facts one needs to consider when evaluating and following news coverage pertinent to this important (and often controversial) issue against the backdrop of United States politics:
California’s Proposition 8 (Prop 8)
- Prop 8 was a ballot proposition and a state constitutional amendment for the California state elections in November 5, 2008. As a result of its passage (by garnering 52% of the votes), Prop 8 added a new constitutional provision to the California Constitution’s Declaration of Rights, which stated that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California” and therefore overturned same-sex couples’ right to marry in the state of California.
- After the successful passage and implementation of Prop 8, protests and demonstrations occurred throughout the state of California and all over the nation as well. Many lawsuits were filed with the California Supreme Court that contested Prop 8’s validity and impact on same-sex marriages that were previously conducted in the state of California.
- Same-sex couples who were married before the passage of Prop 8 are still legally recognized as married in the state of California (there are approximately 11,000 California same-sex couples acknowledged under this stipulation).
- California’s Prop 8 represents the single highest-funded issue on a state ballot, with approximately $84 million in campaign funding being attributed to parties both for and against this state constitutional amendment.
- On February 7, 2012, the Ninth District Court of Appeals upheld a 2010 court ruling that found Proposition 8 to be unconstitutional.
Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)
- DOMA was legalized and implemented in 1996 and limited federal marriage benefits and recognition to solely opposite-sex marriages
- Section 3 of DOMA restricts same-sex couples from having access to certain benefits given to opposite-sex couples, such as insurance benefits for government employees, Social Security survivors’ benefits, the filing of joint tax returns, and stipulations involving immigration.
- Large majorities in both the House and the Senate supported and subsequently passed the bill for DOMA. President Bill Clinton signed the DOMA bill into law on September 21st, 1996, but stated earlier this month that he regrets his decision not this law nearly 17 years ago, disavows DOMA in its entirety, and encourages that DOMA be constitutionally overturned by the United States Supreme Court.
- In 2011, the Obama administration announced that it found Section 3 of DOMA to be unconstitutional. Section 3 of DOMA has been ruled unconstitutional by eight federal courts by reasons surrounding bankruptcy, public employee benefits, immigration, and estate taxes.
- DOMA is now being argued in the Supreme Court case Windsor v. United States. This case originated with a woman in New York suing in regards to the inheritance from her deceased wife had been federally taxed as if they were unmarried. Both the lower court in New York and the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Section 3 of DOMA is unconstitutional, but the first federal court of appeals found that Section 3 falls under intermediate scrutiny (which is the practice that a law being challenge supports an important government interest directly related to that issue).
- The United States Supreme Court agreed to hear arguments for Windsor v. United States on December 7, 2012