Don Nickles: “I was the principal sponsor of the Defense of Marriage Act, which passed and was signed into law by President Clinton in…”

“I was the principal sponsor of the Defense of Marriage Act, which passed and was signed into law by President Clinton in 1996. I heard my very good friend from Minnesota, Senator Dayton, mention that this is about politics, and I wanted to inform him as the sponsor of DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act, it was not about politics in 1996, it was because in 1996 the Hawaiian Supreme Court was getting ready to legalize same-sex marriage, and under the general understanding of full faith and credit, if they recognized it, there would be a lot of same-sex couples running to Hawaii to be married and they would return to other States and those States would be required to recognize it. We thought that was a serious mistake. We did not want that mixed court decision in Hawaii to become the law of the land. So we passed the Defense of Marriage Act. It passed by a vote of 85 to 14.”