Here’s some encouraging news! The state of Massachusetts has launched a lawsuit against the United States government over the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The act, which passed in 1996, prevents states from giving gay couples over 1000 benefits that heterosexual couples already enjoy, including everything from spousal health insurance access to having veterans’ spouses share a burial plot. States that do not comply with the act will lose access to millions of dollars in funding for health care, social services, and other benefit causes.

Massachusetts, having finally noticed that DOMA is ridiculous, has launched the lawsuit on the grounds that DOMA infringes upon the state’s right to define marriage for itself, and forces it to discriminate against gay couples.

The text of the filing is very good:

Congress overstepped its authority, undermined states’ efforts to recognize marriages between same-sex couples, and codified an animus toward gay and lesbian people.

The suit adds that over 16,000 same-sex couples have wed in Massachusetts, noting that “the security and stability of families has been strengthened in important ways throughout the state.”

Way to go Massachusetts!

(Huge tip o’ the hat to James over at Gay Persons of Color for the story.)

• Mass. is 1st to fight US marriage law [Boston Globe]

Stephen Dunne, a 30-year-old Boston man, refused to answer a question on his state’s bar exam involving the property rights of a married lesbian couple. After learning he didn’t score high enough to pass the exam and earn his lawyer’s license, he’s now doing the only thing he knows how: He’s suing.

Dunne, a self-proclaimed Christian, blamed his failure on the question’s hypothetical lesbian couple, calling their marriage and property rights dispute “morally repugnant and patently offensive.” He said the question was designed as part of a greater conspiracy to promote “secular humanism’s homosexual agenda.”

Last I checked, same-sex marriage is a legal reality in Massachusetts.

So far, there’s no word on whether Dunne will also be suing for the non-gay questions he got wrong.

• Bar-exam flunker sues, blaming failure on gay question [CBC News]