September 21, 1996. No big ceremony. No cameras. No triumphant East Room photo op. Just a quiet signature on a law that told gay couples the federal government would never recognize their marriages, even if a state did.
Then Clinton’s reelection campaign ran ads on Christian radio bragging about it.
“One thing that Bill Clinton has done is to support the Defense of Marriage Act,” the ad said. It promised he was protecting “the sanctity of marriage.” Imagine being a gay Democrat in 1996 hearing that while Republicans were already calling you a threat to civilization. It felt like getting shoved out the back door by your own people.
And at the time, DOMA was popular. Massively popular. The Senate passed it 85 to 14. Democrats lined up for it. Joe Biden voted for it. Dianne Feinstein voted for it. Ted Kennedy voted for it. Everybody suddenly became very concerned that Hawaii might legalize same-sex marriage and unleash lesbian chaos upon the republic.
The panic sounds ridiculous now because it was ridiculous then.
But here’s the wild part. DOMA accidentally helped create the movement that destroyed it.
The law had two big sections. One said states didn’t have to recognize same-sex marriages from other states. The other defined marriage, for every federal purpose, as one man and one woman. Taxes, immigration, Social Security, veterans benefits, hospital rights - more than 1,000 federal protections, gone with a stroke of the pen.
That cruelty made the inequality impossible to ignore.
Couples started telling their stories publicly because they had to. People learned about partners getting deported, widows losing homes, and survivors getting taxed on inheritances straight couples received automatically. The abstract argument became painfully personal.
Then the country changed fast. Faster than almost anybody predicted.
In 2004, George W. Bush ran for reelection supporting a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage nationwide. Eleven states passed anti-marriage ballot measures that same year. Conservatives thought they had found a permanent political weapon.
Instead, they lit a fuse.
By 2012, even Barack Obama had evolved publicly on marriage equality. Joe Biden accidentally nudged him there early after endorsing it on Meet the Press. Suddenly Democrats were racing to catch up with voters instead of the other way around.
Then came Edith Windsor.
An 83-year-old lesbian widow from New York who got hit with a $363,000 federal estate tax bill after her wife, Thea Spyer, died. A straight spouse would have paid nothing. Windsor sued the federal government wearing giant scarves and speaking with the energy of somebody who had absolutely run out of patience.
In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the core of DOMA in United States v. Windsor.
Two years later came Obergefell v. Hodges, which struck down the rest. Marriage equality became the law of the land nationwide.
And then, after decades of screaming that gay marriage would destroy civilization, Republicans quietly attended gay weddings, posted rainbow logos every June, and pretended none of this had happened.
The final twist came in 2022. Congress passed the Respect for Marriage Act, which repealed DOMA officially and required the federal government and states to recognize legal same-sex marriages.
President Joe Biden signed that bill into law 26 years after he voted in favor of DOMA.
It wasn't easy, it wasn't certain, but we forced that change through sheer determination, grit, and telling our stories for all to hear.
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