Talking about DOMA (updated)

There's a lot of discussion of DOMA going on.

First, over at Metroweekly/Poliglot:

In this week's issue of Metro Weekly, I begin a series of articles looking at the law. The aim of the series is to present an in-depth examination of the circumstances, consideration and passage of DOMA. In doing so, I hope to take readers to places they've not often gone -- starting with Thursday's cover story, "Domestic Disturbance," which examines the early debate over marriage within the gay and lesbian community.

Then, over at the Advocate, an interview with Bob Barr, former Representative and DOMA architect, who has now called for its repeal:

I guess what I’d say is, work on the marriage issue as a broad national issue — we ought to get the government out of it. But at the same time, try and get people to think of it as at least something that they ought to be free to decide at the state level. Leave it up to the people in the states. Then it’s easier in the next step to getting the government out of it, lock, stock, and barrel.

Meanwhile, on the legal front, the Attorney General has vacated a Board of Immigration decision. Basically, he wants to take a closer look at a deportation proceeding that involved a partnered gay couple. DOMA precludes treating binational gay couples as married, which means that they can be ripped apart and the non-American partner deported.

Attorney Lavi Soloway, a co-founder of Immigration Equality, has been one of the leading attorney-advocates on the issue of asking the government -- the Department of Justice, Department of Homeland Security and White House -- to exercise that discretion. Soloway tells Metro Weekly in an email, "This development could be a sign that the Obama administration is looking for a way to protect gay and lesbian bi-national couples who are currently barred from the regular marriage-based immigration process by the Defense of Marriage Act.

We'll see....