You're listening to the micro version of the Savage Lovecast, www.com.

If you're stuck in a relationship quandary, or if you're looking for sexual harmony,

well, there's nothing you can't pass on the Savage Lovecast.

So you're all probably expecting me to talk about the Defense of Marriage Act and the Prop 8 decisions handed down by the Supreme Court last week, or a week and a half ago, on last week's show.

But because I've been on a book tour and because Nancy Hartoonian producer

of The Savage Lovecast was on vacation.

We banked a couple of shows in advance.

So we had to record a few shows in advance and we weren't up today.

So I wasn't able to rant in real time about how important and earth-shattering and groundbreaking

and life-changing that decision was handed down by the Supreme Court.

I had almost willed myself not to think about it.

I had willed myself not to think about it too much because so much was at stake for

lesbian, gay, bi couples all over this country.

What basically went down for anybody out there who hasn't been paying attention for the last

20 years was in 1996, around about the time that gay marriage advocates began to see some success

in states in Hawaii and Massachusetts, Vermont, some court decisions, some Supreme Court

decisions in the states affirming that same-sex couples are entitled to equality under the law and should be entitled to marry just as opposite-sex couples are entitled to marry and should be afforded the same rights and responsibilities and protections of marriage.

At that time, when we began to see some progress on marriage rights for same-sex couples, Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, signed by then-president Bill Clinton,

that really did something unprecedented, that the federal government had never done before,

instituted a kind of federal definition of marriage.

And the Defense of Marriage Act did a couple of things.

It told states that they didn't have to recognize marriages performed in other states for same

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