Excerpt from The Defense of Marriage Act: Hearing Before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, One Hundred Fourth Congress, Second Session The chairman. Today, the committee is convened to take testi mony on the Defense of Marriage Act, which is sponsored by our colleague, Senator Nickles. The Defense of Marriage Act would accomplish two goals: first, it would make clear that one State's definition of marriage need not be accepted by other States; second, the Defense of Marriage Act also would define the term marriage for purposes of Federal law as meaning only the legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife. That definition would preclude any court from construing Federal law as treating same-sex unions as a marriage. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.