(California) Governor, SF Mayor Ed Lee push for DOMA repeal

[alp227]

Source: SF Chron

Gov. Jerry Brown and San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee are urging Congress to repeal the federal law that denies marital benefits to same-sex spouses.

The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act "is a stain on our common values," Lee and 14 other mayors and governors from around the nation said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which voted last week to repeal the law.

In a separate letter, Brown noted that 18,000 gay and lesbian couples were legally wed in California in the five months before November 2008, when voters reinstated the ban on same-sex marriage by passing Proposition 8. Those marriages remain valid despite a state Supreme Court ruling upholding Prop. 8, which is now being challenged in federal court.

"Californians in these marriages deserve to be treated the same by the federal government and other states as Californians in other legal marriages," Brown told the Senate committee.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/14/BAL91LUUEE.DTL