I opposed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. It should be

In the words of Barack Obama, “I opposed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying.” These words, spoken with clarity and courage, carry the weight of both justice and history. Obama stands not only against a law, but against a spirit of exclusion that sought to deny love its rightful place in the order of society. He declares that marriage cannot be fenced in by prejudice, and that to write inequality into the very heart of the Constitution would be to betray the soul of the republic.

The Defense of Marriage Act, passed in 1996, was born of fear. It defined marriage at the federal level as a union between one man and one woman, casting aside countless men and women whose only desire was to live in fidelity and love. For years it stood as a barrier, marking same-sex couples as unworthy of recognition and their families as less than whole. Obama’s opposition, then, was not merely political; it was moral. He saw in this law the age-old pattern of discrimination, echoing past injustices where laws once forbade interracial unions, denied women their rights, or relegated minorities to second-class status.

The ancients would have understood his cry. They knew that the law, while powerful, must be measured against the eternal standards of justice. Aristotle taught that unjust laws were but corruptions of true law, and the Hebrew prophets thundered that the measure of a nation was how it treated the oppressed and the outcast. Obama’s words fall in that same tradition. He calls upon his people not to enshrine exclusion but to lift up equality, reminding them that the Constitution must be a shield for liberty, not a weapon of oppression.

History offers us a mirror in the story of Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court case of 1967. Richard and Mildred Loving, a white man and a Black woman, were forbidden by law to marry in their own state. Their struggle culminated in a decision that struck down bans on interracial marriage, affirming that the freedom to marry is one of the “basic civil rights of man.” Just as the Lovings’ victory tore down racial barriers, Obama’s stand against the Defense of Marriage Act pointed toward the tearing down of barriers erected against gays and lesbians. Both battles are chapters in the same story—the long march toward recognizing love as sacred and indivisible.

Obama’s refusal to amend the Constitution to ban same-sex marriage is also deeply symbolic. For the Constitution is the covenant of the nation, a sacred charter meant to embody liberty and equality for all. To scar it with exclusion would be to defile its spirit. His words call us to remember that the Constitution grows with time, bending toward greater inclusion, just as it once expanded to abolish slavery and to extend the vote to women. To narrow it in the service of fear would be to reverse the course of history itself.

The lesson of his words is clear: the true role of law is to enlarge freedom, not to restrict it. Marriage is not diminished when extended to all; rather, it is ennobled. The bonds of love and commitment are not weakened by inclusion but strengthened by universality. A society that bars some from its deepest institutions of belonging builds walls around itself, while a society that opens the gates of love builds bridges that endure.

Practical actions flow from this wisdom. Stand against unjust laws, even when they wear the mask of tradition. Guard the Constitution fiercely, resisting all attempts to use it as a tool of exclusion. Defend the right of every person to love and marry whom they choose, recognizing that the dignity of one group is bound to the dignity of all. And above all, speak with courage—for history bends not by silence but by the voices of those who dare to call injustice by its name.

Thus, Obama’s words stand as both a marker and a challenge. They honor the long struggle for equality, while reminding us that the work is never complete. Let them be carried forward as a teaching for future generations: that the measure of a nation is not in the might of its armies or the wealth of its coffers, but in its defense of love, its embrace of the marginalized, and its refusal to sanctify fear in the name of law. For only a nation that protects the freedom to love can truly call itself free.