June 28, 2013
Sheryl Gay Stolburg
WASHINGTON — In the dining room of their town house here, David Huebner and John Barabino were the picture of prosperous domesticity this week. A housekeeper padded about, work on their outdoor patio continued and their 3-year-old son, Miles, napped upstairs.
But together, they put a human face on an uncomfortable truth: Mr. Huebner and Mr. Barabino’s union, although legal, is still not equal to that of their heterosexual friends, even after historic Supreme Court rulings to grant federal benefits to legally married gay couples and restore same-sex marriage in California.
While the plaintiff in the Defense of Marriage Act case, Edith Windsor, will get back $363,000 in federal estate taxes — “with interest,” her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, said — the future is not so clear for Mr. Huebner and Mr. Barabino. They married in California (before the now-overturned ban) and adopted their son there. Their primary home is in Utah, which does not recognize their marriage. But they live part time in Washington, which does.
They are among thousands of legally married same-sex couples, wed in one state but living in another, caught in a confusing web of laws and regulations. It is a predicament the Obama administration is only beginning to grapple with: how to extend federal rights and benefits to same-sex couples when states, not the federal government, dictate who is married.
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