Democrats jumpstarted the 114th Congress with a nod to LGBT equality by reintroducing legislation that would finally kill the Defense of Marriage Act. That law still lets states decline to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.
The Supreme Court overturned Section III of DOMA, which prevented the federal government from recognizing all legally performed same-sex marriages. But Section II lives on, meaning that couples who marry in one of the 36 states where it's legal but move to one of the 14 states where it's not risk losing some 1,100 federal benefits.
Here's Jennifer Bendery at the Huffington Post:
The bill introduced Tuesday, called the Respect for Marriage Act, repeals DOMA entirely. If it were to become law, all legally married same-sex couples would have access to federal marriage benefits and protections, even if they moved to states that haven't legalized gay marriage. It wouldn't require states to pass marriage equality laws; it would only require that legally married same-sex couples living in those states receive the same federal benefits as other married couples.
Unfortunately, the effort isn't expected to move in the GOP-controlled Congress. Why would Republicans do anything to further equal treatment for taxpaying, law-abiding LGBT citizens? The House bill does have one Republican co-sponsor, Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida. Overall, it has 42 co-sponsors in the Senate and 79 in the House.
But clearly Democrats want the nation to know who's on the side of gay rights and introducing a bill that the GOP is likely to summarily dismiss is one way of doing that.