Defense of Marriage Act

Despite the many lawsuits pending to strike at state-level bans on same-sex marriage--and success in some of those lawsuits, the Associated Press reports that the 30-plus mini-Defense of Marriage Act laws aren't going anywhere just quite yet. "'The thing that I would not do is confidently predict that now all of these ‘mini’ DOMAs are going to be declared unconstitutional. That would be a mistake,' ... Andrew M. Koppelman, a Northwestern University School of Law professor and author of “Same Sex, Different States: When Same-Sex Marriages Cross State Lines,”' told the AP. '“There is wiggle room here for judges to do what comports with their sense of what’s right.'" For example, some judges could find that the U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down the federal DOMA left the decision on authorizing same-sex marriage up to individual states. 

A clerk in North Carolina will begin to accept same-sex marriage applications, but there's a caveat. He won't sign the applications unless he gets the permission of the state attorney general. And according to this Chicago Tribune article, the attorney general personally supports same-sex matrimony but will defend North Carolina's Defense of Marriage Act barring same-sex unions.