V.A. to Provide Spousal Benefits to Gays, Administration Says WASHINGTON - The Obama administration on Wednesday escalated its effort to dismantle federal barriers to same-sex marriages, announcing that the Department of Veterans Affairs would immediately begin providing spousal benefits to gay men and lesbians despite a federal statute that limits such benefits to veterans" spouses who are "of the opposite sex." In letters to Congressional leaders, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said that President Obama had directed the executive branch to stop obeying the statute because it had decided that it was unconstitutional in light of a Supreme Court ruling in June that struck down a similar law, a part of the Defense of Marriage Act. "Decisions by the Executive not to enforce federal laws are appropriately rare," Mr. Holder wrote. Nevertheless, for the reasons described below, the unique circumstances presented here warrant nonenforcement. The move will allow the same-sex spouses of service members to receive health care benefits, and widows and widowers from same-sex marriages to receive survivor benefits, among other matters. After the Supreme Court ruling, many agencies - the Pentagon and the Internal Revenue Service among them - have been rewriting their regulations to define marriage in gender-neutral terms. Last month the military announced that the same-sex spouses of active-duty personnel would receive similar family and spousal benefits, including housing allowances. But the V.A. is in a different situation because Congress codified its definition of who was eligible for spousal benefits as a statute, and lawmakers have not changed it. Eric K. Shinseki, the secretary of veterans affairs, said last month in a letter released by Senator Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, that his agency was struggling with the question of providing benefits to surviving spouses because the statutory language defining "spouse" was slightly different from the law that the court had struck down. In the letter, Mr. Shinseki said that although the Department of Veterans Affairs could recognize a same-sex marriage that is valid under state law, "nonetheless, a same-sex spouse whose marriage to a veteran was valid in the state where the parties resided at the time they entered the marriage would not meet the definition of "spouse' " under the federal statute for the purpose of veterans benefits. Should Congress approve legislation revising the spousal definitions statute or should a court strike the law down, Mr. Shinseki added, the V.A. would swiftly adjust its policy. Last week, a Federal District Court judge ruled that the veterans spouse statute was unconstitutional, but that ruling applied only to the specific plaintiffs and the legal issue has not been reviewed by an appellate court. But in his letter on Wednesday, Mr. Holder said there was no point in waiting for a more definitive result. "In the meantime, continued enforcement would likely have a tangible adverse effect on the families of veterans and, in some circumstances, active-duty service members and reservists, with respect to survival, health care, home loan and other benefits," he wrote. The decision does not mean that every same-sex couple is eligible for spousal benefits. Another part of the statute defines spouses as those whose marriages are recognized by the state where they live or where the veteran was discharged - not the state where the marriage occurred. The Supreme Court's ruling said that the federal government could not discriminate against same-sex couples whose marriages were recognized under state law, but it did not create a right to have one's marriage recognized in federal law when the state does not sanction it. The Obama administration's decision to stop obeying the law without a definitive court ruling is a new step in its increasingly aggressive approach to providing same-sex marriage rights. Early in his presidency, when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress, Mr. Obama said that laws discriminating against same-sex couples should be scrapped. But he urged lawmakers to amend them, even as his Justice Department defended Congress's constitutional right to enact such laws in court. In December 2010, the administration pushed Congress to eliminate the law barring gay and lesbian troops from serving openly in the military. But in early 2011, after Republicans took control of the House of Representatives, Mr. Holder informed Congress that the Justice Department had decided that the Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional and that it would no longer defend the law in court. Soon after, Mr. Holder sent another letter to Congress saying the administration had come to the same conclusion on the veterans law. But he also said in both letters that the administration would continue to enforce the disputed laws until a court definitively ruled them to be unconstitutional. On Wednesday, Mr. Holder acknowledged that there has not been a definitive court ruling against the surviving-spouse veterans benefits law. Still, he argued, there were several reasons it was no longer appropriate for the government to refuse such benefits. He cited the spirit of the Supreme Court's ruling, the Federal District Court judge's ruling last week and the fact that the House of Representatives withdrew its legal defense of the veterans statute after the June ruling. "In these unique circumstances, continued enforcement" of the veterans marriage law, he wrote, "is no longer appropriate, and the Executive Branch will no longer enforce them."