{"id":1271,"date":"2009-03-04T17:49:39","date_gmt":"2009-03-04T17:49:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/2009\/03\/suit-seeks-overturn-of-federal.php"},"modified":"2009-03-04T17:49:39","modified_gmt":"2009-03-04T17:49:39","slug":"suit-seeks-overturn-of-federal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/03\/suit-seeks-overturn-of-federal","title":{"rendered":"Suit Seeks Overturn of Federal Gay Marriage Law"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (RNS) Religious groups are divided over a lawsuit filed Tuesday (March 3) to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which gay groups claim unconstitutionally denies them the rights and responsibilities given to straight married couples.<br \/>\nThe Clinton-era law prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages or providing federal benefits to same-sex couples. It also says states are not required to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.<br \/>\nThe Center for American Progress (CAP), a progressive Washington think tank, estimates that the surviving member of a same-sex couple would be denied more than $8,000 a year in Social Security survivor death benefits.<br \/>\n&#8220;This discrimination also clashes with the basic call for love and inclusion that is a cornerstone value across faith traditions,&#8221; CAP said in a statement.<br \/>\nThe suit, filed in federal court in Boston, comes as the California Supreme Courts hears oral arguments Thursday (March 5) in a challenge to last year&#8217;s Proposition 8, which overturned same-sex marriage rights in California.<br \/>\nReligious groups that support the challenge to DOMA include the California Council of Churches, the United Church of Christ, the Progressive Jewish Alliance, Unitarian Universalists and Quakers, according to CAP.<br \/>\nMore conservative religious groups, however, remain opposed to nearly all government recognition of same-sex marriages, and say DOMA is needed to protect states from being forced to recognize gay and lesbian<br \/>\nunions.<br \/>\n&#8220;Public policy should be decided by the public, not by one judge and a very small number of radical activists,&#8221; said Brian Raum, senior legal counsel of Alliance Defense Fund Statement, in a statement. &#8220;America continues to overwhelmingly reaffirm that marriage is one man and one woman. Does the democratic process mean anything anymore?&#8221;<br \/>\n<em>By Karin Hamilton<br \/>\nCopyright 2009 Religion News Service. All rights reserved. No part of this transmission may be distributed or reproduced without written permission.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON (RNS) Religious groups are divided over a lawsuit filed Tuesday (March 3) to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which gay groups claim unconstitutionally denies them the rights and responsibilities given to straight married couples. The Clinton-era law prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages or providing federal benefits to same-sex couples.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Suit Seeks Overturn of Federal Gay Marriage Law<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/03\/suit-seeks-overturn-of-federal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Suit Seeks Overturn of Federal Gay Marriage Law\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"WASHINGTON (RNS) Religious groups are divided over a lawsuit filed Tuesday (March 3) to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which gay groups claim unconstitutionally denies them the rights and responsibilities given to straight married couples. The Clinton-era law prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages or providing federal benefits to same-sex couples.&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/03\/suit-seeks-overturn-of-federal\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-03-04T17:49:39+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"nsymmonds\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Suit Seeks Overturn of Federal Gay Marriage Law","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/03\/suit-seeks-overturn-of-federal","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Suit Seeks Overturn of Federal Gay Marriage Law","og_description":"WASHINGTON (RNS) Religious groups are divided over a lawsuit filed Tuesday (March 3) to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which gay groups claim unconstitutionally denies them the rights and responsibilities given to straight married couples. The Clinton-era law prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages or providing federal benefits to same-sex couples.&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/03\/suit-seeks-overturn-of-federal","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2009-03-04T17:49:39+00:00","author":"nsymmonds","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/03\/suit-seeks-overturn-of-federal","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/03\/suit-seeks-overturn-of-federal","name":"Suit Seeks Overturn of Federal Gay Marriage Law","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-03-04T17:49:39+00:00","dateModified":"2009-03-04T17:49:39+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/03\/suit-seeks-overturn-of-federal#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/03\/suit-seeks-overturn-of-federal"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2009\/03\/suit-seeks-overturn-of-federal#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Suit Seeks Overturn of Federal Gay Marriage Law"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/f960b23e9c3a51222269c557a209b4f2","name":"nsymmonds","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/13d\/13ddfa3407d6847bc2fbd32a13b67708x96.jpg","caption":"nsymmonds"},"description":"Nicole Symmonds is Beliefnet\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Prayer editor and also covers Christianity. A New Yorker by birth but a Floridian by tenure, Nicole graduated from Florida A&M University with a B.S. in Public Relations and a minor in Sociology. She moved to NY to pursue a career in journalism which started at In Style magazine. There she learned the ropes of magazine reporting, researching, and writing\u00e2\u20ac\u201dand became exponentially more stylish. But what seemed like a deep interest in fashion and entertainment would soon be revealed as merely the vehicle that moved her closer to discovering her purpose, writing and covering matters of the Christian faith. While in her purpose-driven vehicle she can be found traveling between Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens for life, work and worship, respectively. From fashion to faith and the journey isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t over yet\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author\/nsymmonds"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1271\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}