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...Faith and Credit
This clause (Art. IV, [section]1) stipulates: "Full Faith and Credit shall given in each State to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other State." Congress by general law is authorized to "prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof." This authority was exercised in 1790, 1804, 1980, 1994, 1996 and 1999. The 1996 clarification was prompted by the Hawaiian Supreme Court's 1993 decision in Baehr v. Miike (852 P.2d 44 at 57-72) holding that the statutory denial of a marriage license to same sex couples violated equal protection provision and equal rights amendment to the state constitution and remanding the case for a trial. On December 3, 1996, trial judge Kevin S.C. Chang ruled same sex couples had the constitutional right to marry. Implementation of the decision was delayed until the state legislature had an opportunity to act. Voters on November 3, 1998, reversed the decision of the Supreme Court by ratifying a legislatively proposed constitutional amendment (Art. I, [section]23) granting the legislature "the power to reserve marriage to opposite sex couples."
Congress responded to the Hawaiian Supreme Court's decision by enacting the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 (110 Stat. 2419, 1 U.S.C. [section]1) defining a marriage as "a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and a wife" and the term "spouse" as "a person of the opposite sex who is husband or a wife" and authorizing states to deny "full faith and credit to a marriage certificate of two persons of the same sex." Currently, 39 states have enacted a state defense of marriage act, and Maryland, New Hampshire, Wisconsin and Wyoming have statutes or court decisions banning same sex marriages. Missouri voters on August 3, 2004, and Louisiana voters on September 18, 2004, ratified a proposed defense of marriage constitutional amendment. Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Utah will vote on the question of prohibiting same sex marriages on November 2, 2004.
The controversy over same sex marriages was re-ignited on November 18, 2003, by the 4 to 3 decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Goodridge v. Department of Health (440 Mass. 309, 798 N.E.2d 941) holding unconstitutional a statute denying "the protections, benefits, and obligations conferred by civil...
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