In 2008, Barack Obama pledged to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and replace it with a law that gave equal rights and protections to same-sex couples.

The 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, signed under President Bill Clinton, defined marriage as between one man and one woman, excluding same-sex couples from more than 1,000 federal rights and protections.

As a candidate Obama wrote that he supported the full repeal of the law in an open letter to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transexual, or LGBT, community.

Obama took steps to nix it, but the law remains on the books.

Last year, the Justice Department announced it considered the law unconstitutional and would stop defending it in court. But that's far short of the repeal Obama promised.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Cali., also introduced a bill that would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, and Obama and his attorney general backed it in public statements.

Feinstein's bill -- called the Respect for Marriage Act -- represents the most serious legislative attempt to fulfill Obama's campaign promise. It cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on a tight 10-8 party-line vote in November 2011.

That's as far as it went. The Senate hasn't held hearings or votes and doesn't have anything scheduled for the rest of the year.

On the judiciary side, federal judges and a U.S. appellate court have declared a section of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional, though it would take the weight of a Supreme Court ruling to strike down the law.

Also under Obama, the Justice Department filed a legal brief arguing for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act and asked the Supreme Court to hear two cases challenging the law's constitutionality.

The only other progress we've seen on the issue relates to Obama's ABC News interview in May, in which he gave his personal endorsement of gay marriage. Although this gesture did not trigger any policy change, it reinforced Obama's position to do away with the law.

Even so, the outcome candidate Obama promised -- granting same-sex couples equal federal rights and protections as heterosexual couples -- hasn't happened. We rate this a Promise Broken.