Phil Kent, Georgia GOP Appointee, Ready For 'Cultural War' Following DOMA Ruling

Phil Kent, a Republican appointed to the Georgia Immigration Enforcement Board by Gov. Nathan Deal (R), dismissed same-sex couples seeking marriage equality as "sob stories" on Sunday.

"It's a sad day in America because this does dynamite the foundations of our Judeo-Christian system," Kent said Sunday on the local Fox program "The Georgia Gang," referring to the Supreme Court's recent decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act. "It's going to be a cultural war in Georgia and every other state to try to undo this wrong."

Supreme Court DOMA Decision Rules Federal Same-Sex Marriage Ban Unconstitutional

WASHINGTON -- The Defense of Marriage Act, the law barring the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages legalized by the states, is unconstitutional, the Supreme Court ruled Wednesday by a 5-4 vote.

"The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion. "By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment."

DOMA Ruled Unconstitutional By Federal Appeals Court

BOSTON — A battle over a federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman appears headed for the Supreme Court after an appeals court ruled Thursday that denying benefits to married gay couples is unconstitutional.

In a unanimous decision, the three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston said the 1996 law deprives gay couples of the rights and privileges granted to heterosexual couples.

The court didn't rule on the law's more politically combustible provision – that states without same-sex marriage cannot be forced to recognize gay unions performed in states where it's legal. It also wasn't asked to address whether gay couples have a constitutional right to marry.

Kathryn Lehman, Republican Lesbian Who Helped Write DOMA, Is Now Lobbying To Repeal It

WASHINGTON -- It has been 16 years since Kathryn Lehman was a Republican Hill staffer working on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the federal law that defines marriage as between one man and one woman.

Now Lehman's back on Capitol Hill, in a new capacity: as a lesbian GOP lobbyist trying to repeal the law she helped write.

Things were pretty different in Lehman's world in 1996. She was engaged to a man. Same-sex marriage wasn't legal anywhere. And the public perception of what it meant to be gay wasn't anything like it is now, she says.

"There was nobody married, it wasn’t allowed anywhere," Lehman recalls. "The view of gay people ... it wasn't Ellen [DeGeneres]. It wasn't Neil Patrick Harris. It was kinky sex and women riding around on motorcycles without shirts on. That was sort of the view that the community projected as well."

"It wasn't people that you know, people that you work with, people just like everybody else."

John Boehner Has Collected $742,000 For DOMA Defense, Top House Official Says

WASHINGTON -- Ever since House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) signed on last year to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court, it's been a mystery trying to figure out where, exactly, he was getting the taxpayer funds to pay for it.

But those numbers became clear Tuesday as lawmakers sparred over the point, and the costs, of the House hiring outside attorneys to defend the federal ban on gay marriage at a time when money is tight and when various courts -- but not the U.S. Supreme Court -- have ruled that the law is unconstitutional.

Boehner so far has collected $742,000 to defend DOMA, and that money was skimmed from funds that would normally go toward House officer and employee salaries, Chief Administrative Officer Dan Strodel told members of a House Appropriations subcommittee. Strodel said none of that money came out of the budget of the Justice Department, which dropped its defense of DOMA in February 2011 after Attorney General Eric Holder determined it to be unconstitutional. Boehner, in his authority as speaker, has been defending the law on behalf of the federal government ever since.