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Historic day for gay marriage: Supreme Court strikes down DOMA, punts on Prop 8

CELEBRATION: Virginia Sin (left) and Gretchen Menter greet yesterday’s news with champagne at the historic Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village. (
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A sharply divided US Supreme Court gave a double-barreled boost to gay marriage yesterday in a pair of decisions that energized supporters and outraged opponents.

First, the justices threw out the 17-year-old Defense of Marriage Act, which was designed to be the federal bulwark against same-sex weddings.

In Washington, where hundreds of gay-marriage supporters waited outside the courthouse, an enormous cheer went up — followed by the chant “DOMA is dead!” — as couples hugged and cried.

Then in a follow-up, the court delivered another surprise: It threw out appeals challenging same-sex marriage in California, making it one of 13 states with marriage equality.

But the justices, in their 5-4 decisions, didn’t touch the basic issue — whether gays have a constitutional right to marriage.

President Obama, who opposed gay marriage as recently as early 2012, hailed the DOMA ruling. “The Supreme Court has righted that wrong, and our country is better off for it,” he said.

In New York, a tearful City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who is lesbian, said, “I think all of our hopes and dreams came true at the Supreme Court today.”

But foes said the battle just getting started. “A robust national debate over marriage will continue in the public square, and it is my hope that states will define marriage as the union between one man and one woman,” a “disappointed” House Speaker John Boehner said.

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The court’s first ruling held that Congress acted unconstitutionally in 1996 when it overwhelming passed DOMA and denied federal benefits to same-sex couples. Among the results of yesterday’s decision:

* Married gays will be entitled to benefits from more than 1,000 federal rules that previously covered only heterosexuals.

* That means about 130,000 gay couples can file federal taxes jointly, be eligible for enhanced Social Security checks and survivor benefits and save money on federal gift and estate taxes and in other ways.

For example, Edith Windsor, the 84-year-old Manhattan lesbian at the heart of the DOMA case, is now owed more than $363,000, plus interest, in estate taxes she paid after the death of her wife, Thea Speyer.

* But tax experts said the death of DOMA may be a net benefit for the US Treasury. Many married gays will pay more in federal income tax because they are now subject to the so-called marriage penalty, they said.

In the majority opinion, swing-vote Justice Anthony Kennedy said, “DOMA’s avowed purpose and practical effect are to impose a disadvantage, a separate status, and so a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex marriages.”

But in a scathing dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia said the majority was wrong twice — for agreeing to hear the case and for the way they decided it: “The error in both springs from the same diseased root: an exalted notion of the role of this court in American democratic society.”

The ruling rippled through New York, prompting several gay couples to commemorate the day by heading to the city’s Marriage Bureau.

“When we discovered that finally DOMA was struck down, we said, ‘Let’s buy rings and let’s go,’ ” Upper West Sider Luciano Melo, 42, said after a trip to Tiffany’s with Bill Parker, 51.

“It’s so nice to be treated like an equal,” said Parker.

Frederik Eklund, a top real-estate broker and star of Bravo’s “Million Dollar Listing,” wed British artist Derek Kaplan in February. Now Kaplan can get a green card, leave London and join Eklund in New York.

“I am ecstatic,” Eklund said. “I am really proud of America. It is a huge step for America and for everyone.”

The other highly anticipated case concerned California’s Proposition 8, in which 52 percent of voters rejected gay marriage in 2008.

That was declared unconstitutional in 2010 by a federal judge. California state officials refused to appeal, but gay-marriage opponents took the issue to the Supreme Court in March.

Yesterday, the justices said the foes weren’t directly affected by Proposition 8 and therefore “lacked standing” to appeal. “We have never before upheld the standing of a private party to defend a state statute when state officials have chosen not to,” Chief Justice John Roberts said.

On the other side, Justice Kennedy wrote that majority didn’t understand California’s initiative system, which encourages citizens to make laws through referendums. “Freedom resides first in the people without need of a grant from government,” he said.

With additional reporting by Beth DeFalco, Jennifer Gould Keil and Yasmine Phillips