[7] Within the movement for gay and lesbian rights, a debate between advocates of sexual liberation and of social integration was taking shape, with Andrew Sullivan publishing an essay "Here Comes the Groom" in The New Republic in August 1989 arguing for same-sex marriage: "A need to rebel has quietly ceded to a desire to belong.

[7] In 1991, Georgia Attorney General Michael J. Bowers (who had previously been the defendant in a failed Supreme Court challenge to a law that criminalized homosexuality) withdrew a job offer to a lesbian who planned to marry another woman in a Jewish wedding ceremony.

[25][26] After Congress had passed DOMA with veto-proof majorities in both houses,[27] Clinton signed the bill into law on September 21, 1996[28][29] late at night behind closed doors.

[32] The White House released a statement in which Clinton said "that the enactment of this legislation should not, despite the fierce and at times divisive rhetoric surrounding it, be understood to provide an excuse for discrimination, violence or intimidation against any person on the basis of sexual orientation".

[31] In 2013, Mike McCurry, the White House press secretary at the time, recalled that Clinton's "posture was quite frankly driven by the political realities of an election year in 1996.

[49] The 2000 Republican Party platform endorsed DOMA in general terms and indicated concern about judicial activism: "We support the traditional definition of 'marriage' as the legal union of one man and one woman, and we believe that federal judges and bureaucrats should not force states to recognize other living arrangements as marriages.

[51] In 2004, President George W. Bush endorsed a proposed constitutional amendment to restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples because he found DOMA to be vulnerable: "After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization.

[60] On July 1, 2011, the DOJ, with a filing in Golinski, intervened for the first time on behalf of a plaintiff seeking to have DOMA Section 3 ruled unconstitutional, arguing that laws that use sexual orientation as a classification need to pass the court's intermediate scrutiny standard of review.

[67] Clement, without opposition from other parties to the case, filed a motion to be allowed to intervene in the suit "for the limited purpose of defending the constitutionality of Section III" of DOMA.

[76] Following the Attorney General's decision to no longer defend DOMA,[58] the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), an arm of the House of Representatives, took up the defense.

Former United States Solicitor General Paul Clement filed, on BLAG's behalf, a motion to dismiss raising arguments previously avoided by the Department of Justice: that DOMA's definition of marriage is valid "because only a man and a woman can beget a child together, and because historical experience has shown that a family consisting of a married father and mother is an effective social structure for raising children.

"[77][78] On July 1, 2011, the DOJ filed a brief in support of Golinski's suit, in which it detailed for the first time its case for heightened scrutiny based on "a significant history of purposeful discrimination against gay and lesbian people, by governmental as well as private entities" and its arguments that DOMA Section 3 fails to meet that standard.

[61][79] On February 22, 2012, White ruled for Golinski, finding DOMA "violates her right to equal protection of the law under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution."

He wrote,[80] The Court finds that neither Congress' claimed legislative justifications nor any of the proposed reasons proffered by BLAG constitute bases rationally related to any of the alleged governmental interests.

The suit claims that Congress "overstepped its authority, undermined states' efforts to recognize marriages between same-sex couples, and codified an animus towards gay and lesbian people.

[88][89] He found in Gill that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act violates the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

[92] On November 3, 2011, 133 House Democrats filed an amicus brief in support of the plaintiffs in Gill and Massachusetts, asserting their belief that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional.

[101]On June 6, 2012, Judge Barbara Jones ruled that based on rational basis review Section 3 of DOMA is unconstitutional and ordered the requested tax refund be paid to Windsor.

[104][105] According to an ACLU press release, this ruling was "the first federal appeals court decision to decide that government discrimination against gay people gets a more exacting level of judicial review".

Government deals with marriage as a civil status—however fundamental—and New York has elected to extend that status to same-sex couples.On December 7, 2012, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

One of the plaintiffs in the case, lesbian Charlie Morgan, who was undergoing chemotherapy, met with an assistant to Boehner on February 9, 2012, to ask him to consider not defending DOMA.

[130] On July 18, BLAG's response acknowledged that "[t]he Supreme Court recently resolved the issue of DOMA Section 3's constitutionality" and asked to be allowed to withdraw from the case.

It took no position on the two statutes at issue in the case, which define a "spouse" as "a person of the opposite sex", except to say that "the question of whether [that definition] is constitutional remains open".

[142] Following some uncertainty after the Obama Administration determined Section 3 to be unconstitutional, the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) reaffirmed its policy of denying such applications.

[144] Tim Coco and Genesio J. Oliveira, a same-sex couple married in Massachusetts in 2005, successfully challenged this policy and developed a model since followed by other immigration activists.

They conducted a national press campaign[146] A Boston Globe editorial commented, "Great strides toward equality for gays have been made in this country, but the woeful fate of Tim Coco and Genesio Oliveira shows that thousands of same-sex couples, even in Massachusetts, still aren't really full citizens.

[148] He then gained the support of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who granted Oliveira humanitarian parole, enabling the couple to reunite in the U.S. in June 2010.

[159] On April 2, 2012, five bi-national same-sex couples represented by Immigration Equality and Paul, Weiss filed a lawsuit, Blesch v. Holder, in the District Court for the Eastern District of New York, claiming that Section 3 of DOMA violated their equal protection rights by denying the U.S. citizen in the relationship the same rights in the green card application process granted a U.S. citizen who is in a relationship of partners of the opposite sex.

On September 15, 2009, three Democratic members of Congress, Jerrold Nadler of New York, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, and Jared Polis of Colorado, introduced legislation to repeal DOMA called the Respect for Marriage Act.

Frank and Berry suggested DOMA could be overturned more quickly through lawsuits such as Gill v. Office of Personnel Management filed by Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD).