Ken Blackwell writes in World magazine:

The Obama administration is lending support to Congress in an effort to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. The president, instead, is backing something called the “Respect Marriage Act.” The latter measure, quite simply, would abolish marriage.

... DOMA protects marriage. It also protects the integrity of the electoral process itself. The drive to abolish marriage is fundamentally anti-democratic. The people want true marriage; the elites want to do away with it.

That death [of marriage] will mean the impoverishment of more women and more children. We know that if a young couple will but finish high school, avoid bearing children out of wedlock, and marry, the chances they will live in poverty are only 4 percent. True marriage is the best anti-poverty program ever devised.

No one who is for the abolition of marriage can claim to be a friend of the poor. And it is not only poor women and children who will suffer, but also minorities and the marginal. We know this because they are the ones suffering now.

... True marriage is no wedge; it is a bridge. And that bridge brings together blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and whites into a powerful majority coalition. That is why the elites hate and fear the marriage issue. That is why they will not allow voters in Massachusetts, Connecticut, or New York state to vote to protect true marriage.