WASHINGTON (ABP) -- A Florida judge has ruled against the first direct challenge to a federal law banning same-sex marriage.

Federal District Judge James Moody of Tampa dismissed a Florida lesbian couple's lawsuit seeking to overturn the federal Defense of Marriage Act Jan. 19.

Nancy Wilson and Paula Schoenwether had sued for the right to get their marriage recognized in their home state. The two were wed last year in Massachusetts, after that state became the first jurisdiction in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage. Gay marriage is illegal in Florida.

Moody, an appointee of former President Bill Clinton, said Wilson and Schoenwether's argument that a clause of the Constitution requiring states to recognize other states' legal arrangements didn't apply in their case.

"Adopting plaintiffs' rigid and literal interpretation of the 'full faith and credit' [clause] would create a license for a single state to create national policy," Moody wrote in his opinion. He noted that the Supreme Court has previously ruled that the clause does not apply when one state's legal arrangement is in clear opposition to the stated public policy of another state.

The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act officially recognizes only heterosexual marriages for federal purposes, and explicitly states that states opposed to gay marriage don't have to recognize homosexual unions from other states.

---