Acknowledging that "Supreme Court review of DOMA is highly likely," the Court stayed the implementation of its decision pending a likely appeal.

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Since the First Circuit is a small circuit, with only five active judges, it is unlikely that an en banc review would be granted. More likely, the defendants will move directly to request that the U.S. Supreme Court hear the case. It is quite possible that the Supreme Court will accept review of these cases for the term beginning in October 2012.

It is important to stress that these cases are not "marriage" cases: even if GLAD and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts prevail Supreme Court of the United States, their victory would not result in establishing a right to same-sex marriage. It likely would not even invalidate all of DOMA.

These cases involve couples who are already married, and they ask the courts to declare that if a state permits same-sex marriage, then the federal government must respect the state's decision and treat same-sex married couples identically to opposite-sex married couples.

These cases do not seek to establish a national right to same-sex marriage nor even to force states to recognize same-sex marriages that are performed in other states.

The case that may conceivably result in a national right to same-sex marriage is Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the federal challenge to California's Proposition 8, which amended the California state constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage. The acclaimed attorneys who brought the case, Theodore Olson and David Boies, won a sweeping victory in a California federal district court, which was upheld by a three-judge panel int the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, but is now awaiting a decision on an en banc review in that Court.

State Defense of Marriage Acts

Currently, 30 states have amendments to their constititutions that prohibit same-sex marriage and another 13 have statutes that prohibit same-sex marriage.

Some of these state amendments and statutes were adopted in the wake of the Hawaii case, as was the federal DOMA, but many of them were placed on state ballots by the Republicans in the presidential election years of 2000, 2004, and 2008 in a cynical attempt to use same-sex marriage as a "wedge issue" to motivate their conservative base.

What is especially disturbing about these state constitutional amendments is that many of them ban not only same-sex marriage, but all forms of state recognition of same-sex couples. The Michigan amendment, for example, was interpreted by the Michigan Attorney General to mean that municipalities may not extend domestic partnership health care benefits to same-sex couples, an interpretation upheld by the state's conservative Supreme Court.

Perhaps the most disappointing defeat in challenging constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage came in 2012 when, by a margin of 61% to 39%, voters in North Carolina overwhelmingly approved Amendment One, which bans not only same-sex marriage but recognition of any "domestic relation" other than a marriage between a man and a woman. It will likely end domestic partner benefits for unmarried couples in the state and may end recognition of "common-law" relationships between unmarried heterosexual couples.

Although defeating Amendment One was always thought to be a long shot, many believed that it could be done. Polls showed that while 60% of the state's voters were opposed to same-sex marriage, almost 60% were in favor of either same-sex marriage, civil unions, or domestic partnerships. It was believed that Amendment One could be defeated if the electorate were educated to the fact that it banned not only same-sex marriage but also civil unions and domestic partnerships and that it may also wreak other "collateral damage."