The author of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, which allows states to violate the full faith and credit section of the Constitution by not recognizing valid marriages performed in another state in addition to construing a federal definition of marriage, has called for its repeal. In a Los Angeles Times op-ed article today, former Georgia Congressman and 2008 Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr says the law’s unintended consequences — he calls it "reverse federalism" — mean it is not working as legislated and can no longer be defended.

Barr provides some legislative history and illustrates how DOMA ended up the inverted law that it is today:

Contrary to the wishes of a number of my Republican colleagues, I crafted the legislation so it wasn’t a hammer the federal government could use to force states to recognize only unions between a man and a woman. Congress deliberately chose not to establish a single, nationwide definition of marriage.

However, we did incorporate into DOMA’s second part a definition of marriage that comported with the historic — and, at the time, widely accepted — view of the institution as being between a man and a woman only. But this definition was to be used solely to interpret provisions of federal law related to spouses.

The first part of DOMA, then, is a partial bow to principles of federalism, protecting the power of each state to determine its definition of marriage. The second part sets a legal definition of marriage only for purposes of federal law, but not for the states. That was the theory.

Barr says the theory behind DOMA isn’t working:

In effect, DOMA’s language reflects one-way federalism: It protects only those states that don’t want to accept a same-sex marriage granted by another state. Moreover, the heterosexual definition of marriage for purposes of federal laws — including, immigration, Social Security survivor rights and veteran’s benefits — has become a de facto club used to limit, if not thwart, the ability of a state to choose to recognize same-sex unions.

Even more so now than in 1996, I believe we need to reduce federal power over the lives of the citizenry and over the prerogatives of the states. It truly is time to get the federal government out of the marriage business. In law and policy, such decisions should be left to the people themselves.

When the author of a law says the time has come to repeal it, whether for reasons of federalism or civil rights for all, then Congress needs to pay attention. This thirteen year old law serves no purpose any longer but a restriction on the rights of the states to determine that they will treat people equally. That’s a bad law.

Barr concludes:

In 2006, when then-Sen. Obama voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment, he said, "Decisions about marriage should be left to the states." He was right then; and as I have come to realize, he is right now in concluding that DOMA has to go. If one truly believes in federalism and the primacy of state government over the federal, DOMA is simply incompatible with those notions.

Time to repeal DOMA.