Bill Clinton urges Supreme Court to overturn DOMA

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton, who signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) into law, which bars federal recognition of marriages of same-sex couples, called on the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the law. In a Washington Post op ed, Clinton wrote that he now believes that that DOMA is unconstitutional and contravenes the values of “freedom, equality and justice above all.”

Clinton wrote, in part:

As the president who signed the act into law, I have come to believe that DOMA is contrary to those principles and, in fact, incompatible with our Constitution.

Americans have been at this sort of a crossroads often enough to recognize the right path. We understand that, while our laws may at times lag behind our best natures, in the end they catch up to our core values. One hundred fifty years ago, in the midst of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln concluded a message to Congress by posing the very question we face today: “It is not ‘Can any of us imagine better?’ but ‘Can we all do better?’”

The answer is of course and always yes. In that spirit, I join with the Obama administration, the petitioner Edith Windsor, and the many other dedicated men and women who have engaged in this struggle for decades in urging the Supreme Court to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act.

Read the entire op ed here.