Federally recognized same sex marriage?
This morning in my e-mail inbox was a link to a post about "the first federally recognized same-sex marriage".
Now, I'm not really an expert on this kind of law, but my reading of the relevant portion of DOMA makes me think that the federal government is going to be doing any recognizing of this particular marriage. (That's like saying if a Native American tribe started allowing polygamy that those relationships would be recognized as marriage in US Federal law.)
Just because a Native American tribe is a sovereign nation within the United States, and there's some sort of federal recognition that the Native American nation can do things it own way doesn't mean that it's magically going to overwrite DOMA. This is a different situation than a state legalizing same-sex marriage, but I don't see how it's substantially different. Perhaps it provides another avenue to challenge the constitutionality of DOMA. (I think that's unlikely, since there's a lot more in the Constitution about states than sovereign nations.)
So I don't think a legal loophole has been discovered here. But I am glad to see that we can add at least one more jurisdiction that's being sensible and recognizing that gender boundaries aren't the right way to decide who ought to be allowed to marry.