Attorneys for the State and City of New York, who were defending the marriage law, disagreed.
It notes that the government has launched a public consultation on changes to the marriage law.
If the legislature decides to repeal that marriage law will he support that decision?
He said the administration had bipartisan support in its bid to get the Supreme Court to nullify the marriage law.
WSJ: Justices Question Obama's Stance on Defense of Marriage Act
Meanwhile, Maine is voting on whether to reinstate a gay marriage law that was overturned in a popular vote in 2009.
The New Hampshire legislature this month is expected to vote on a bill that would repeal the same-sex marriage law there.
The marriage law is seen as France's most important social reform in France since the abolition of the death penalty in 1981.
Later that month, Iceland's prime minister Johanna Sigurdardottir married her partner, writer Jonina Leosdottir, on the day the country's gay marriage law came into force.
"I can't think of another instance where that's happened, " said Justice Stephen Breyer, a liberal, referring to the House's intervention in the federal marriage law case.
Former President Bill Clinton, who signed the marriage law into effect 17 years ago, said this month he now backs the right of homosexuals to marry.
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Until now, the State Department had withheld these benefits citing the Defense of Marriage Law, which restricts the recognition of same-sex marriages on the federal level.
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The amendments to the marriage law would make divorce harder.
Both Rick Perry and Mitt Romney have said they support the repeal of the marriage law there, but what does the President hope is the outcome of this vote?
Washington (CNN) -- Maryland's highest court has ruled that a lesbian couple married out of state can legally file for divorce, even though Maryland's own same-sex marriage law does not take effect until next year.
Advocates for the same sex couples tried to make a very simple case that the state's 97-year old marriage law, which refers to husband and wife, doesn't live up to modern standards of equal protection under the law.
Fewer than 100 days after Gibson survived his first reelection campaign, wealthy 26-year-old investor Sean Eldridge--who is married to Facebook cofounder Chris Hughes and campaigned for New York's gay-marriage law--filed Federal Election Commission papers to run in the district.
Surveys have showed that the divide is both political and generational: The Left is, for the most part, in favour of the same-sex marriage law while the hard Right, and leaders of the French Catholics, Muslims and Jews oppose it.
Even the business of catching adulterers in the act, once a dependable income stream for private eyes, dried up when a change to marriage law in 1973 meant the party seeking a divorce no longer needed to prove that a spouse had cheated.
This mostly boils down to redefining marriage in law so that same-sex couples may contract it.
Blatant discrimination in the shape of the Defence of Marriage Act enshrines in law that marriage is between a man and a woman.
That statute protects marriage under federal law as the union of a man and a woman, and declares that one state may not redefine marriage for other states.
In its separate argument on Wednesday, the justices will tackle the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a 1996 law defining marriage for federal purposes as between a man and a woman.
CNN: Same-sex marriage: A potential Supreme Court blockbuster
Such civil union laws in most cases provide the same rights of marriage under state law, without actually calling it that.
Furthermore, even if the Defense of Marriage Act is upheld, the law does not protect marriage within any state or city.
The federalism argument is that marriage and family law have traditionally been state domains, and therefore Congress lacks authority to legislate in these areas.
Many other states, including New Jersey, Illinois, Delaware, Rhode Island and Hawaii, have legalized domestic partnerships and civil unions for such couples -- a step designed in most cases to provide the same rights of marriage under state law.
CNN: Obama administration weighs in on defense of marriage law
Nine other states, including California, New Jersey, Illinois, Delaware, Rhode Island and Hawaii, have legalized domestic partnerships and civil unions for such couples -- a step designed in most cases to provide the same rights of marriage under state law.
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While the definition of marriage is still left to the states, they say, the federal government has stepped in before to enforce order, as when it declared uniform national policy on death taxes regardless of whether states had community-property laws or common-law marriage.
The separate case over the Defense of Marriage Act involves a 1996 law that says for federal purposes, marriage is defined as only between one man and one woman.
Hughes is Eldridge's spouse under New York law but, pursuant to the Defense of Marriage Act, not under federal law.
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