This Day In American History: Feb. 23

Feb. 23, 2017 is the 54th day of the year, with 311 remaining. The moon today is waning, with illumination at 11 percent and further decreasing every day until the new moon on Feb. 26.

Defense of Marriage Act Deemed Unconstitutional (2011)

The evolution of President Barack Obama's stance on gay marriage underwent a transformation that — at the minimum — spanned the whole of his first term in office. Obama said in 2008 that he believed marriage was between a man and a woman, that he was not in favor of gay marriage. Still, he believed that gays and lesbians deserved the same basic civil rights as their fellow Americans.

Come 2011, the 44th president of the United States acknowledged that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) — a law that defined marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman, allowing individual states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages — blocked gay rights. Flash forward two years later, and the U.S. Supreme Court has declared Section 3 of the DOMA unconstitutional under the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

Cuba Leases Surrounding Guantánamo Bay Territory to U.S.

Enter 1903.

President Theodore Roosevelt has signed an agreement with Cuba — led by then-president Tomás Estrada Palma — that leases areas around Guantánamo Bay to the United States, territory that would eventually become the site of the present-day Guantánamo Bay Naval Base and detention center. The agreement comprised 45 square miles at the mouth of Guantánamo Bay for an annual 2,000 gold coins.

This agreement, although ultimately renegotiated in a 1934 treaty, withstood the test of time despite the Cuban Communist revolution of 1959 and President Eisenhower's breaking-off of once-friendly relations in 1961. Eisenhower publicized that such circumstances had no bearing on the then-status of the Guantánamo Naval Station.

Today, the Guantánamo Bay detention center retains a total of 41 detainees.

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