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SINCE 1995, when Utah passed the first law of its kind, thirty-seven states and the federal government have moved rapidly to legislate bans against something that does not, in fact, exist in the United States, namely, "gay marriage."1 Termed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at the federal level, the speed and success of the passage of this law and the "mini-DOMAs" at the state level show many of the earmarks of a moral panic, especially when swept into law through referenda. What is especially noteworthy about this American trend is the degree to which it is exceptional on the world scene. At a time when the legal recognition of gay and lesbian relationships has been proceeding apace in advanced industrial nations around the world (most notably, in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Canada, Germany, and Hungary and partially or locally in Australia, Austria, Brazil, Colombia, Czech Republic, New Zealand, Portugal, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom), the efforts of U.S. legislators to prohibit legal recognition demand explanation.2 While none of these countries introduced full legal recognition of same-sex relationships all at once, and few have granted the full range of rights and responsibilities accorded to heterosexual relationships, legal reform has steadily become more comprehensive in sociopolitical environments that lack comparable DOMA-style countermobilizations.
Ever since Edwin Sutherland observed in his classic 1950 article that "dangerous and futile laws are being diffused with considerable rapidity" and asked, "What is the explanation of this diffusion of laws which have little or no merit?" sociologists have been attempting to explain various sorts of moral panics and symbolic crusades.3 Sutherland was referring to the exceedingly ill-defined "sexual psychopath" category that was rushed into law in twenty-one states and the District of Columbia between 1947 and 1955.4 Though Sutherland's own explanation of the spread of sexual psychopath laws has since attracted critical scrutiny, the problem of the diffusion of punitive laws rooted in a politics of panic or resentment remains a primary issue that should be amenable to sociological analysis.5 Some of that analysis has been done through measuring social phenomena against the set of criteria laid out by Stanley Cohen for moral panics, which he characterizes as focused on "threats to societal values and interests . ....