In the fall of 1996, Congress passed, by an overwhelming margin, the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage in the eyes of the federal government, as being between a man and a woman. DOMA, as it’s known, was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2013, the same year that Maryland’s Civil Marriage Protection Act became law after voters here became the first in the nation to approve same sex marriage by referendum.
Let’s listen again to a conversation with Roberta Kaplan, the lawyer who argued the landmark Supreme Court Case that overturned DOMA. She wrote a book about that experience called Then Comes Marriage: United States v Windsor and the Defeat of DOMA. The Los Angeles Times named it one of the Top 10 Books of 2015. Tom spoke with Ms. Kaplan in November, just before she came to Baltimore to give a talk at the Walters about her experience – a talk sponsored by thePublic Justice Center.
