Photo: Opponents of Proposition 8 in California protest. Source: Dannyman, Flickr

The Minnesota for Marriage coalition, a group that is is urging voters to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, has told the media and the Minnesota campaign finance board that if they have to disclose their donors, they will be subject to violence by supporters of marriage equality.

But a string of court cases across the country have shed serious doubt on those claims, with courts finding that conservative leaders were unable to provide credible evidence of threats or violence.

Avoiding disclosure in Minnesota

The Minnesota Family Council and the National Organization for Marriage lobbied the campaign finance board to loosen disclosure on campaign spending by arguing that their donors will be targeted if their names are disclosed.

“To require groups, non profits like the Minnesota Family Council, to disclose their donors and make their donors names public would have a significant chilling effect on free speech. Even in Minnesota already it’s gotten heated in some respects,” Tom Prichard, president of MFC, told the board in June. “The concern is harassment, property damage, a chilling effect. If I know I have to disclose my name, I’m not going to get involved with the Minnesota Family Council.”

Prichard said he had knowledge of violence against donors to the Prop 8 campaign in California.

“They went after their employment, by challenging their employers. There was vandalism on certain organizations. I can think of one individual that his business suffered because he had to disclose,” he said. “I don’t think our organization should have to disclose our donors, period. We just don’t believe we should be forced to.”

Conservative Catholic columnist for the Star Tribune, Katherine Kersten, recently echoed the Minnesota Family Council’s claims.

“A block thrown through a home window. Cars vandalized. Hate-filled anonymous phone calls at home and work. Swastikas scrawled on houses of worship. Physical assaults. Dismissal from employment because of political views,” wrote Kersten. “[T]his is the sort of intimidation that Americans who support marriage as the union of a man and woman can face today. Persecution of opponents is becoming a tool of the trade for some gay-marriage activists, who—ironically—seem to view themselves as beacons of tolerance.”

She added, “Now, the groundwork for such intimidation is being laid in Minnesota.”

The groundwork is actually being laid for a lawsuit by NOM and the Minnesota for Marriage coalition against the state of Minnesota. When the campaign finance board rejected Minnesota for Marriage’s arguments that full disclosure of donors would put them at risk, the coalition announced that it would not follow the board’s disclosure rules.

But history shows that launching a lawsuit in Minnesota based on the possibility of violence against marriage amendment supporters would be an uphill battle.

Protect Marriage Washington falsified or exaggerated about threats

NOM’s claims were tested this fall in Washington state when Protect Marriage Washington (PMW), a group affiliated with NOM, lost its case in court. PMW wanted to overturn that state’s domestic partner laws through an initiative called R-71. The group was successful in gathering enough signatures to put the repeal on the ballot, but it did not want those signatures to be public arguing that “militant homosexual activist groups” would target them.

After a local paper did a feature with state legislator Elizabeth Scott, a feature that included her contact information and talked about her support for repealing the domestic partner law, she said she received death threats.

“Extremists issued multiple death threats to me and my children due to my being publicly questioned about my personal beliefs,” Scott told the Faith and Freedom Network. “I am greatly concerned for both the safety and the freedom of speech of those who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman.”

The court found that Scott’s story did not stand up to scrutiny.

“However, other than speculation, Scott does not attribute to R-71 this death threat or any other incident that she claimed could be considered harassment,” the court wrote.

After the court decision, she wrote, “I guess when the First Amendment is eliminated, we drop back to the Second.”

Gary Randall, who runs the Faith and Freedom Network that spearheaded the effort to repeal the domestic partner law, also had his own complaints about death threats, which he later retracted.

“Randall testified that he received death threats via a blog site; however, when asked to demonstrate where in the copy of the blog posting he believed a threat of his or another’s life was made he could not do so without relying on assumptions,” the court wrote, adding that Randall “finally conceding that no actual death threat was made on the website”

The court noted that Randall was referring to the website, PinkPistols.org, which is a group for LGBT people who hold conceal and carry licenses.

“This website appears to advocate for homosexuals to be armed if desired to use only in self defense,” the court said in a footnote. “[Randall] has not supplied competent evidence to the contrary.”

As a matter of fact, the website no longer exists and according to the Wayback Machine hasn’t been updated since 2006, well before Washington’s enacting of the domestic partnership law.

Other witnesses provided testimony in the Washington case that the court found lacking. One witness testified that he was harassed when two women came up to him while he was gathering signatures for R-71 and one said “we have feelings too.” Another said he found three Post-It notes on his car with vulgar language. Still another felt harassed when a passing motorist made offensive gestures at him.

In the court’s conclusion, Judge Benjamin Settle wrote:

Applied here, the Court finds that Doe has only supplied evidence that hurts rather than helps its case. Doe has supplied minimal testimony from a few witnesses who, in their respective deposition testimony, stated either that police efforts to mitigate reported incidents was sufficient or unnecessary. Doe has supplied no evidence that police were or are now unable or unwilling to mitigate any claimed harassment or are now unable or unwilling to control the same, should disclosure be made.

The court did say that they’d demonstrated that there was some hostility to a same-sex marriage ban in the state, but not that it could lead to threats or violence, and that there had been no evidence that advocates had been harassed in the two years since the ballot question was introduced to Washington state voters.

California and Prop 8

In October, NOM and ProtectMarriage.com lost their bid to keep donors to the Proposition 8 campaign anonymous. The groups worked to pass Proposition 8, which repealed the state’s legalization of same-sex marriage in 2008. NOM had argued that disclosing its donors would chill free speech and that widespread violence against Prop 8 supporters would put its donors at risk.

But the judge in the case, U.S. District Judge Morrison England, a Bush appointee, found the evidence a bit thin.

[T]he vast majority of the incidents cited by Plaintiffs are arguably, as characterized by defendants, typical of any controversial campaign. For example, picketing, protesting, boycotting, distributing flyers, destroying yard signs and voicing dissent do not necessarily rise to the level of “harassment” or “reprisals,” especially in comparison to acts directed at groups in the past.

Moreover, a good portion of these actions are themselves forms of speech protected by the United States Constitution.

The court also rejected the idea that any activity directed at entities that backed Prop 8, such as the Mormon church, necessarily meant it was due to Prop 8.

“Plaintiffs have produced insufficient evidence that the more incendiary events on which they rely were connected to Proposition 8 or to gay marriage at all,” the judge wrote. “Rather, a number of these incidents were directed at the Mormon church, which, though a backer of California’s proposition, may also have been a target for any of a number of other reasons.”

And while NOM and other anti-gay marriage amendment backers said that the violence against them was widespread, the judge disagreed.

Accordingly, while Plaintiffs can point to a relatively few unsavory acts committed by extremists or criminals, these acts are so small in number, and in some instances their connection to plaintiffs’ supporters so attenuated, that they do not show a reasonable probability plaintiffs’ contributors will suffer the same fate. Given the grand scale of plaintiffs’ campaign and the massive (and national) support they garnered for their cause, plaintiffs’ limited evidence is simply insufficient to support a finding that disclosure of contributors’ names will lead to threats, harassment or reprisals.

The future in Minnesota
Government transparency advocates have been watching NOM’s actions in Minnesota very carefully. In addition to California, Washington, and Minnesota, NOM has also unsuccessfully challenged disclosure laws in Iowa, Maine, New York and Rhode Island.

“Proponents and opponents of same-sex marriage certainly are engaged in a heated debate,” wrote Common Cause Minnesota’s Mike Dean and Mark Ladov of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York Universtiy School of Law in a column for the Duluth News Tribune. “But it is insulting to claim transparency would leave major campaign donors vulnerable to the violent intimidation tactics civil-rights activists faced in the era of Bull Connor.”

Dean and Ladov pointed back to the outcry when Target Corporation gave money to a group supporting an anti-gay marriage candidate.

“[R]emember how these same groups howled about so-called ‘harassment’ when gay-rights advocates called for a boycott of Target over contributions supporting Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer. But that isn’t harassment. It’s a boycott — one of the time-honored ways in which ordinary people, without access to wealthy corporate treasuries, can organize for change and make sure their voices are heard in the political process.”

The influential lobby for the environment said Friday that it was jumping into the same-sex marriage debate because of its commitment to social justice.

“To achieve our mission of environmental protection and a sustainable future for our planet, we must attain social justice and human rights at home and around the globe,” said Margaret Levin, the state director of the Sierra Club North Star Chapter. “The Sierra Club North Star Chapter has a long history of working together to protect our communities and our planet. We do not tolerate injustice, and we will not stand by and allow our state constitution to be used as a means of dividing communities and harming families.”

It’s one of the first times a chapter of the powerful environmentalist group has backed an LGBT rights issue. The group declined to get involved in California’s Prop 8 battle in 2008 and Maine’s Question One in 2009.

Two polls show that the amendment might get defeated while two others show a slight lead for anti-gay marriage activists.

On Thursday, the St. Cloud State University Survey was released showing that 47 percent of Minnesotans thought the constitution should not be amended and 44 percent said it should. The difference is within the poll’s 5 percent margin of error, making the result a statistical tie.

The St. Cloud Times notes that the margin changes drastically depending on what type of phone the user answered: 48 percent of landline phone users supported the amendment compared to 39 percent of cell phone users.

A KSTP/SurveyUSA poll released on Wednesday found that 46 percent of registered voters support the amendment while 40 percent said they would vote against it. Interestingly, the poll also asked whether someone would not vote on the issue, which is considered a “no” vote in Minnesota. Ten percent said they did not plan to vote at all on the question bringing the total of opposition and under-vote to 50 percent, within the poll’s 4.3 percent margin of error making the question a statistical tie.

The landline versus mobile split was also present in the SurveyUSA poll. Only 34 percent of mobile users planned to vote for the amendment while 50 percent of landline users planned to vote for it.

The Star Tribune released its Minnesota poll on Tuesday showing that 48 percent of Minnesotans support the amendment, 43 percent opposed it and 8 percent are undecided. The results were within the poll’s margin of error, meaning that this poll as well was a statistical tie.

The result matches closely with what SurveyUSA found but completely opposite of the St. Cloud State University poll.

The one poll that was an outlier in this week was a poll by QEV Analytics commissioned by Minnesota for Marriage, the group advocating for the gay marriage ban. In that poll, 51 percent of voters said they would vote for the amendment and 40 percent would vote against it.

Minnesota for Marriage released the poll in response to the Star Tribune poll, which the group calls biased.

“The Star Tribune survey showing us with a five point lead substantially understates our true position. This is not surprising given the newspaper’s historic bias against conservative issues and candidates,” Minnesota for Marriage chair John Helmberger said in a statement. “We are releasing our own survey, which utilized the actual wording of the amendment question being presented to voters, to show that we enter the campaign in a very strong position.”

The QEV poll excluded media and political employees and their families from the poll. It asked, “Are you, or anyone in your household, employed with an advertising agency, newspaper, television or radio station, or political campaign?” Anyone who answered in the affirmative was excluded from the poll.

The poll also differed in that it heavily sampled older Minnesotans. Only 35 percent of the poll’s respondents were under age 50, while 60 percent were 50 years old and over.

QEV has been the pollster of choice for the National Organization for Marriage which is part of the Minnesota for Marriage coalition.

Both testified that DOMA hurts same-sex couples who are legally married in several states. Franken told his colleagues that repealing the law would have not consequences for heterosexual couples, and that allowing same-sex marriage won’t make anyone gay.

The repeal effort passed the Senate Judiciary Committee 10-8. It still needs to pass a full vote on the Senate floor and faces opposition in the Republican-controlled House, although Minnesota Reps. Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum and Tim Walz are supporters of the House version.

Klobuchar said she was “struck” by the number of people who testified against DOMA in hearings last summer.

“They were discriminated against and unfairly harmed,” Klobuchar said. “They were denied protections like the ability to take off work to care for a dying partner and denied survivor benefits when a partner died.”

Klobuchar also said the issue wasn’t about religion.

“Whatever we vote on today and whatever happens today, the bill doesn’t require any church or mosque or synagogue to perform same-sex marriage. As the debate on this continues, we cannot lose sight of that,” she said.

Franken took issue with a statement by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who argued that marriage has always been defined as the union of one man and one woman. Franken argued that was false.

“In many cultures, men have been able to marry many women and young girls. For centuries, women have been treated as cattle in marriage. Further, if the religious purpose for marriage is procreation, why would we sanction marriage between an 89-year-old widower and an 80-year-old widow?” Franken said. “I just think we need to be accurate when we talk about the history of marriage, the history of man and woman, the history of our institutions.”

Franken spoke about couples in Minnesota who have been harmed by DOMA including a young couple who met in divinity school and married in Connecticut who have to lie on their federal tax forms and say they are single.

He talked about another Minnesota couple that married in Iowa, John and Jeff Westerfield. John was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

“Jeff won’t have the federal right to take a medical leave. If John passes, Jeff won’t see a dime from Social Security,” said Franken. “DOMA hurts people who love each other. DOMA hurts people who want to adopt kids and raise them and take care of them. DOMA hurts families.

“We need to pass this bill. Straight people aren’t suddenly going to become gay, Straight people aren’t going to stop getting married. We are going to be just fine. Really.”

The bill, dubbed the Respect for Marriage Act, passed the committee on a party-line vote.

Cleta Mitchell, a partner in Foley and Lardner, registered as a lobbyist on Oct. 26 to represent NOM. The HRC said it was downgrading Foley and Mitchell from 100 percent to 60 percent on its corporate equality index.

The Minnesota Independent first reported about Mitchell registering as a lobbyist at the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board last week. Mitchell’s expertise is in assisting Tea Party candidates and organizations with campaign finance laws. She’s helps candidates identify loopholes in the campaign finance system. The National Organization for Marriage has been urging the campaign finance board to relax disclosure laws so that it will not have to disclose its donors.

On Tuesday, HRC sent a letter to Jay Rothman, CEO of Foley and Lardner, alerting the firm that it was losing its 100 percent rating which it earned in 2010 and was being downgraded to 60 percent due to Mitchell’s involvement with NOM and the anti-gay marriage amendment in Minnesota.

“In a time when major corporations, including the nation’s top law firms, are taking unprecedented strides in support of LGBT equality with regards to their workplace practices and business activities, your firm has regrettably taken a notable step backwards,” the letter said. “In the 2010 [Corporate Equality Index], Foley & Lardner achieved a perfect 100 score. In the 2012 CEI to be released next month, your firm will drop further to a 60, one of the lowest scores earned by an Am Law firm in the upcoming report.”

Foley and Lardner had also worked for an anti-gay marriage group in Washington, D.C., in 2009, causing HRC to temporarily drop its rating.

We fully recognize that the legal profession has the duty to represent unpopular clients and take on controversial cases,” HRC wrote of the firm’s 2009 work. “Ms. Mitchell is a registered lobbyist on behalf of NOM in Minnesota, which goes well beyond any professional or ethical obligations of legal representation. Moreover, the firm has established a clear pattern of knowingly taking on anti-LGBT organizations as clients, even after we and others in the community expressed concerns.”

JoeSolmonese_letter_FoleyAndLardner_Nov2011

All three incumbent members of the Anoka-Hennepin School Board were re-elected on Tuesday night amid controversy surrounding the school district’s controversial policy limiting discussions of LGBT issues in the district’s school.

Marci Anderson and Tom Heidemann, both of whom support the “neutrality policy” won, as did Scott Wenzel, who opposes the policy.

Heidemann won over challenger Darin Rorman, 70 percent to 27 percent. Anderson won with 40 percent of the vote, beating challengers Mary Nelson and Randy Kolb who both got 29 percent. Wenzel ran unopposed and got 95 percent of the vote.

The district’s policy limiting discussions of LGBT issues has become a national controversy after reports of bullying and several suicides among LGBT students. It has sparked protests at the district and at least six lawsuits against the school.

The Minnesota Family Council, which supports the policy and endorses only negative portrayals of LGBT people in public schools, implicitly endorsed Heidemann and Anderson on Tuesday.

The district has been battered by accusations that its “neutrality policy,” which restricts discussion about LGBT issues. The district is currently being sued by six former students and their families for this policy. Conservatives have long been active in the district, pushing to maintain the policy.

Opponents to the amendment seek broad, non-partisan support
Minnesotans United for All Families organized a series of house parties on Sunday that marked one year until the amendment vote.

Brian Barnes, a DFL candidate vying for the nomination to take on Republican Rep. Erik Paulsen in Minnesota’s Third Congressional District, participated in the event.

“On Sunday, my wife and I had the great honor of hosting an event in our home for Minnesotans United,” Barnes said in a statement. “It was truly inspiring to be surrounded by so many people committed to ensuring the right of marriage is extended to all citizens—regardless of their sexual orientation. Our state has always led this country in the cause of equality and opportunity for all Americans. And that charge lives on today.”

He added, “By standing together, I’m endlessly confident we will defeat this hateful amendment and write the next great chapter in the American story—one that has always evolved toward breaking down barriers and building a fairer, more just future for our friends and neighbors.”

State Sen. Patricia Torres Ray, Minneapolis City Council member Sandy Colvin Roy, and state Rep. Jim Davnie hosted an event in Minneapolis. Minnesota politicos including Tom Horner and Matt Entenza also participated.

Event organizers say more than 100 people opened their homes on Sunday for fundraisers in cities like Duluth, New Ulm, Moorhead and Winona.

Minnesotans United was also the beneficiary of another high-profile event, the Big Gay Race, held in mid-October. The event drew 1,500 participants who raised money and ran a 5K in downtown Minneapolis.

The event was organized in part by Jacob and Michelle Frey.

“My wife and I were both professional distance runners,” Jacob said at the time. “So we settled on staging a race. So that’s how the Big Gay Race came into being.” Jacob Frey is also a candidate to replace Sen. Larry Pogemiller who announced he was retiring last week.

Republicans Against the Minnesota Marriage Amendment released a statement on Sunday.

“A year from today, Minnesotans will vote on whether to ban same-sex marriages in our state constitution,” the group said. “The campaign will be hard-fought. In the next year, talk to fellow Republicans, your friends, family members, neighbors, and co-workers. Urge them to vote no. Volunteer your time to the campaign against the amendment. Dig deep into your wallet to stop this misuse of government power. We will win with principles and hard work.”

Marriage ban supporters make a religious case
Minnesota for Marriage The coalition working to pass the amendment marked one year out from the vote by releasing a video with testimonials from several attendees at the Minnesota State Fair in August.

In addition to the video, the group said it was also “calling on Minnesotans to set aside a special time this Sunday to pray for the passage of the Minnesota Marriage Protection amendment, commit to strengthening our own marriages, and then get active in the campaign!”

Late last week, the group also launched its Drive for Five campaign, which will include a $100 Visa Card contest for those who sign up five Minnesotans to get involved in promoting the amendment.

“Throughout our campaign, we intend to feature the voices of average Minnesotans who are willing to speak out about why they support marriage and are committed to preserving it by adopting the amendment,” said Minnesota for Marriage’s John Helmberger. “Our opponents have many in the media on their side, they have the cultural elite and they have billionaires in Colorado, Hollywood and on Wall Street to help them spread their message. We have the truth of marriage as understood by virtually every faith and proven throughout human history.”

Minnesota for Marriage is also conducting a series of information sessions around the state to build support for the amendment. One such meeting was held in Minneapolis in late-October.

A participant who asked not to be identified by name told the Minnesota Independent that the meeting had about 30 participants and was headed by former staffer for Rep. Michele Bachmann, Tim Gould, who is working for Minnesota for Marriage as the group’s grassroots organizer. Also heading up the meeting was Tim Hansen, the Minnesota Family Council’s church outreach director, and Cathy Deeds, who works as an outreach coordinator for the Minnesota Catholic Conference.

Minnesota for Marriage told meeting participants that they were working on a massive voter identification effort as well as finding supportive churches in every legislative district.

“It’s best to center on emotions,” the meeting participant recalled of the meeting’s strategy, saying they were urged to talk about the effect same-sex marriage would have on children and to use people’s belief in the Bible to make their arguments.

About 48 percent of Minnesotans support the amendment voters will judge on the November 2012 ballot, 43 percent are opposed to the ban and 8 percent are undecided.

The poll shows that people under 34 overwhelmingly rejected the amendment, 58 to 33 percent, and Minnesotans over 65 overwhelmingly approved of the ban at 70 percent to 26 percent. People who had higher incomes, higher education and lived in the Twin Cities metropolitan area were more likely to reject the amendment.

Predictably, the state split along party lines with Republicans supporting the amendment, 66 to 26 percent, and DFLers rejecting it 60 to 35 percent. Independents were split with 48 percent supporting it and 44 percent rejecting it.

The poll differs sharply with one conducted by the paper in May. That poll found that 55 percent opposed the amendment and 39 percent supported it, but that poll asked people to respond to the statement: ”Please tell me if you would favor or oppose amending the Minnesota constitution to ban same-sex marriage.”

The poll released on Tuesday asked an entirely different question: “Would you favor or oppose amending the Minnesota Constitution to allow marriage only between a man and a woman?”

As other pollsters have found, anti-gay marriage amendments lose support when those polled understand that in addition to defining marriage as between a man and a woman, such amendments bar same-sex couples from marrying.

Public Policy Polling which has been doing monthly polling on a similar amendment in North Carolina noted that there was a vast swing in support for the amendment depending on wording.

“Voters are against ‘prohibiting’ recognition for gay couples. But if you word it in such a way that all you’re doing is defining marriage as between one man and one woman, voters are ok with that,” said PPP’s Tom Jensen. “You’re asking about the same thing in both cases, but the semantics make a huge difference and Republicans clearly know what they’re doing with the language that’s on the ballot.”

The policy, often dubbed the neutrality policy, is at the center of a nationwide discussion about suicide and anti-LGBT bullying and the subject of a lawsuit by six district students and their families.

The family council wrote that this is a “critical election” for the board.

“As you may know, the district has been targeted by national liberal organizations for its neutrality policy on sexual orientation. The neutrality policy states that school officials and teachers will remain neutral on issues involving sexual orientation. The school district believes these issues are better addressed by parents and families than by school officials. For taking this reasonable position, the school district is being sued by national liberal organizations.”

The MFC asked supporters to “vote their values” by supporting Tom Heidemann in District 1 and Marci Anderson in District 2.

At the bottom of the email was a short disclosure: “Prepared and paid for by Minnesota Family Council, in support of Tom Heidemann and Marci Anderson. This is issue advocacy and is not approved by the candidate nor is the candidate responsible for it.”

Tuesday’s election has been higher profile than in recent years due to the controversy over the neutrality policy. Three of the board’s six seats are up for election on Tuesday, and two of the seats–those of Heidemann and Anderson–are being contested.

Anderson’s opponents, Mary Nelson and Randy Kolb, oppose the neutrality policy. Heidemann’s opponent, Darin Rorman, hasn’t stated where he stands on the issue. Current school board member Scott Wenzal opposes the policy, but is running unopposed.

The Minnesota Family Council has been at the heart of the controversy surrounding LGBT issues in the district. In the past, its employees have played a part in forcing a transgender music teacher to quit, backed a policy that said “homosexuality not be taught/addressed as a normal, valid lifestyle and that the district staff and their resources not advocate the homosexual lifestyle” and worked to ban posters with suicide help-lines targeting LGBT students.

The Anoka-Hennepin School District drew national attention after a number of students, some of whom were gay, committed suicide.

Source: donsutherland1, Flickr

Reps. Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum and Tim Walz joined 130 other members of Congress in filing a brief in a court case challenging part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

The members are challenging Section 3 of DOMA that denies benefits to some legally married couples in Massachusetts that others are afforded and the members say it compromises states’ rights.

The lawsuit began in 2009, when the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD) filed suit on behalf of eight legally married same-sex couples and three surviving spouses after they were denied federal legal protections.

133 House members added their support for the couples’ lawsuit.

“Some [House members] voted against the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”) while others voted for it; still others were not in Congress when DOMA was enacted. But all believe, today, that Section 3 of DOMA, which defines marriage for all federal purposes as ‘only a legal union between one man and one woman,’ lacks a rational relationship to any legitimate federal purpose and accordingly is unconstitutional,” the brief said.

Fourteen of the 133 House members signing the brief voted for the original law that they now view as unconstitutional. The only member of Minnesota’s congressional delegation to have voted for DOMA in 1996 is Democratic Rep. Collin Peterson, who has said he continues to support the law and voted to “reaffirm” it earlier this year.

Walz, Ellison, and McCollum have all been elected to Congress well after that vote. All three have also sponsored legislation to repeal DOMA.

The brief said, in part, that it was a response to House Speaker John Boehner’s decision to expend federal time and money on the Defense of Marriage Act.

“[The members] also wish to make clear that the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (“BLAG”), which has intervened in this case to defend Section 3’s constitutionality, does not speak for a unanimous House on this issue.”

The brief concluded that DOMA was a federal overreach into the individual states’ rights to determine marriage.

“Prior to DOMA, Congress achieved its legitimate federal interests in promoting the welfare of American families by working cooperatively with the states and respecting state marriage determinations. Congress’s radical departure from that federalist practice was a mistake; because Section 3 violates the Fifth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee, it is also unconstitutional. The decision below should be affirmed.”

The case is being heard in the First Circuit’s U.S. Court of Appeals.

Here’s the full list of members who signed the brief:

Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, James E. Clyburn, Jerrold Nadler, John Conyers, Jr., Barney Frank, Tammy Baldwin, Jared Polis, David N. Cicilline, Gary L. Ackerman, Robert E. Andrews, Karen Bass, Xavier Becerra, Shelley Berkley, Howard L. Berman, Timothy H. Bishop, Earl Blumenauer, Robert A. Brady, Bruce L. Braley, Lois Capps, Michael E. Capuano, André Carson, Judy Chu, Hansen Clarke, Yvette D. Clarke, Wm. Lacy Clay, Emanuel Cleaver, Steve Cohen, Gerald E. Connolly, Joe Courtney, Joseph Crowley, Danny K. Davis, Susan A. Davis, Diana DeGette, Rosa L. DeLauro, Theodore E. Deutch, Lloyd Doggett, Michael F. Doyle, Donna F. Edwards, Keith Ellison, Eliot L. Engel, Anna G. Eshoo, Sam Farr, Chaka Fattah, Bob Filner, Marcia L. Fudge, John Garamendi, Charles A. Gonzalez, Raúl M. Grijalva, Luis V. Gutierrez, Janice Hahn, Colleen W. Hanabusa, Alcee L. Hastings, Martin Heinrich, Brian Higgins, James A. Himes, Maurice D. Hinchey, Mazie K. Hirono, Kathy Hochul, Rush D. Holt, Michael M. Honda, Jay Inslee, Steve Israel, Jesse L. Jackson, Jr., Sheila Jackson Lee, Eddie Bernice Johnson, Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, Jr., William R. Keating, Dennis J. Kucinich, John B. Larson, Barbara Lee, Sander M. Levin, John Lewis, Zoe Lofgren, Nita M. Lowey, Carolyn B. Maloney, Edward J. Markey, Doris O. Matsui, Carolyn McCarthy, Betty McCollum, Jim McDermott, James P. McGovern, Jerry McNerney, Gregory W. Meeks, Brad Miller, George Miller, Gwen Moore, James P. Moran, Christopher S. Murphy, Grace F. Napolitano, Richard E. Neal, Eleanor Holmes Norton, John W. Olver, William L. Owens, Frank Pallone, Jr., Ed Pastor, Donald M. Payne, Gary C. Peters, Chellie Pingree, David E. Price, Mike Quigley, Charles B. Rangel, Laura Richardson, Steven R. Rothman, Lucille Roybal-Allard, Bobby L. Rush, Tim Ryan, Linda T. Sánchez, Loretta Sanchez, John P. Sarbanes, Janice D. Schakowsky, Adam B. Schiff, Robert C. “Bobby” Scott, José E. Serrano, Brad Sherman, Louise McIntosh Slaughter, Adam Smith, Jackie Speier, Fortney Pete Stark, Mike Thompson, John F. Tierney, Paul Tonko, Edolphus Towns, Niki Tsongas, Chris Van Hollen, Nydia M. Velázquez, Timothy J. Walz, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Maxine Waters, Henry A. Waxman, Peter Welch, Lynn C. Woolsey, John A. Yarmuth.