DOMA is indicative of a much larger problem regarding the contract of marriage. The idea that marriage is something to be decided solely by the states neglects the fact that the contract has federal benefits in terms of protections and taxes. Marriage is a universal contract as per the federal government which follows you around from state to state. having different rules as per state really confuses the issue even for straight marriages.
In accordance with past supreme court rulings the marriage contract of one state was supposed to be honored by every other state to prevent the need to remarry as per the state you are in. If Ny does not respect florida's marriage contracts then you run into some real legal problems moving from state to state which is one of the things the present constitution tried to limit as opposed to the previous attempts to unite the states under a federal umbrella. Divorce, or the dissolving of the marriage contract, already faces huge differences depending on where you reside at the time.
If marriage is to be used as a federally recognized contract between two people then it needs to have stability across the entire umbrella of federal rule. This is the real problem of DOMA and the present varriance of states recognition of a federally supported contract.
For example. let us say I get married to someone of my gender in MA. Now i go to NC where they recently made a law saying the state does not recognize our union. That is nice, but i may already have things like joint bank accounts, mutually owned property, wills, children, and whatever else comes along with the marriage partnership. How does the state of NC now separate 2 people who were legally joined in another state? For instance our car is owned by both of us, but now who has legal responsibility to insure it? Who has legal responsibility for maintaining the car? Who is responsible to the bank? I am driving through NC and get into an accident and all of a sudden the person who can make medical decisions for me might be thousands of miles away instead of right next to me like I had planned.
DoMA gave the states way too much authority to dissolve partnerships which had universal needs across the US. BTW DOMA doesn't limit the states to do this only to gays as far as i have seen. Differences in age could also make trouble with the marriage contract for states which allow marriage at different times. before they had to respect the contract, but now they are told they do not have to.
here comes the major problem with all the arguments against gay marriage. The state is only interested in the marriage contract which is the joining of legal and financial assets and responsibilities by the two people getting married. the state does this for the legal purposes of establishing and dissolving partnerships under a constant legal precedent to protect both parties. It has nothing to do with god at all. the state cannot tell a straight person they cannot engage in a partnership with another consenting adult. The church can say your marriage counts or doesn't in the eyes of god, but the state has no say on whether or not the church is willing to marry you. Some churches wont marry a divorced person and still recognize their previous marriage as valid, but the state allows the dissolve of that partnership at the request of the partners. So all the gay marriage bans and DOMA do not actually ban a gay couple from being married in the eyes of god. they only stop them from entering into a legal marriage contract. So for all the effort the goal of stopping gays from being "married" in the eyes of god is never accomplished and can't be accomplished as per the constitution.
So DOMA should be thrown out because it muddles up the marriage contract from state to state and allows for situations where a permanent contract would become invalid depending on the location in the country. In other words, if a gay couple had a stipulation of fidelity in their marriage contract, they could cheat without penalty in states that did not respect the contract they entered into willingly.
So throw this stupid shit out. It doesn't do what it was meant to do. marriage needs to be federally protected if it is going to apply federally. This just ***** shit up, and doesn't work.