A signature after midnight
No cameras, after midnight: how a US President blocked marriage equality for years.
On 21 September 1996, US President Bill Clinton signed a law that he himself considered divisive and unnecessary. The Defense of Marriage Act, DOMA for short, laid down that under federal law marriage could only be the union of a man and a woman. At the same time, states were allowed simply to ignore same-sex marriages from other states.
The impetus came from Hawaii. There, in 1993, the Supreme Court had indicated that a ban on marriage for same-sex couples might be unconstitutional. In Washington, concern grew that such marriages would soon have to be recognised across the country. Congress reacted quickly. Both chambers passed the bill by large majorities, including many Democrats.
For Clinton the bill came at a bad time. A few weeks before the presidential election, he did not want to hand the Republicans a campaign issue. So he signed it, without ceremony, without cameras and only after midnight. In a short statement he stressed that the law must not be a pretext for discrimination, and called for protection against discrimination in the workplace. Nothing came of it.
The consequences were tangible. Married same-sex couples remained excluded from federal benefits, whether in taxes, pensions or immigration law.
Over the years the wind turned. From 2011, the Obama administration no longer defended the law in court. In 2013 the Supreme Court struck down the core of the law in the case of the widow Edith Windsor. Shortly before, even Clinton himself had urged the justices to overturn DOMA. It had been a different time, he wrote. Two years later the court opened marriage nationwide. DOMA was only formally repealed in December 2022, by the Respect for Marriage Act.