My Twitter pal Chris Geidner has all the details, so please click over, but here’s the gist:

White House press secretary Jay Carney announced today that President Barack Obama supports the Respect for Marriage Act, a bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act that will have its first Senate hearing on July 20. In response to a question from Metro Weekly, Carney said Obama is “proud to support” the bill that “would take DOMA off the books once and for all.”

And via CNN:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, announced Tuesday a bill to repeal the federal law that defines marriage as a “legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife” and that allows states to reject legal same sex marriages from other states. [...]

She said her bill would “strike the Defense of Marriage Act from law and would free the government to allow for the same type of benefits they allow for married couples to also be applied to same-sex couples.”  [...]

Feinstein’s repeal bill has gained 27 Democratic co-sponsors. She noted in the hallway after her remarks that there has been no Republican support for the bill. “I think it’s a hard time because of the tea party and the ideological bent, but I think that’s going to change,” she said.

She added that the bill would have a hard time getting through the House were it pass in the Senate, but “we’re in this for the long march, not just the short hop.”

I yearn for the day when the GOP neanderthals will join the rest of us in the 21st century. How novel that would be.