Politics & Government
Woman In Same-Sex Marriage Responds To DOMA Ruling
With the U.S. Supreme Court's DOMA ruling, Jana Broder said the nation's Pledge of Allegiance rings louder and truer than ever before.
Almost two months to the day Jana Broder got married in Maryland, she got a text message from her wife, Kimberly, which is how, as Broder put it, she learned that the couple "now has the same rights as everyone else under federal law."
"I couldn't believe it," Broder, 54, said. "I was driving my car in Plant City and saying the Pledge of Allegiance, 'One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.' And I was smiling."
"For once I can say that," Broder added, "and fully believe it."
She said she wasn't expecting a favorable ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the act prohibiting federal recognition of gay marriage as constitutional.
But that is now the edict, with five justices approving and four dissenting.
Broder said it is as it should be, that the will of the people — of all sexual persuasions — has moved the court to its historic June 26 ruling.
"It's the American people who have spoken," she said.
Broder is known throughout Eastern Hillsborough County as "the drum lady."
Through her company, Drum Magic, Broder provides both the drums and facilitation for corporate, festival and community drum circles designed for stress release, ice-breakers, pep rallies and other motivational, recreational, healing and educational purposes.
She was in between jobs, in Plant City and Valrico, when she got the text message alerting her that her marriage is on equal legal footing with all others in the eyes of federal law. Now, Broder said, it is time to break all state barriers and to rid the world of the last vestiges of intolerance, and to afford her and her wife the same marital rights and benefits.
Does she believe that will be the will of her sate, Florida, and of all the states that have yet to rule favorably on same-sex marriages?
"I do, I do," Broder said. "I think the [Supreme Court justices] took a big stand. They didn't take the easy way out and say, 'Let the states handle it.' The federal law is for everyone. The important message here is that we all are equal, in our work, in our businesses, in our lives."
Business is better than ever for Broder, whose personal life is at a great moment as well, with her new marriage the result of a six-year committed relationship.
"I never understood why my wife and I shouldn't have the same rights and benefits as anyone else," she said. "I have never understood why anyone would want to take something away from somebody else. Surely it couldn't be something I was born with, that was God-given. I was created by the same God as everyone else."
Growing up, Broder said she knew she was different "and I prayed to be straight."
"I would do whatever I could, whatever I could, to be straight, but I couldn't be straight."Â
Then, she fell in love.
"I was 18 or 19 and I had my first feeling [of love]," she said. "I didn't know then that anybody else felt the way I did. I was so relieved."
Broder said her only regret is that her father, who died in October, did not live long enough to witness the wedding he had wished for her.Â
"He wanted Drum Magic to succeed and he wanted his daughter to be happy," Broder said. "I'm never going to let that sadness or grief overcome the happiness that he wanted me to have."
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