Et Tu, Obama?

The knife in our back has been officially twisted.

After vowing on the campaign trail to work to repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the Obama administration is now vigorously defending the discriminatory law in federal court - and it's using language straight from "The Homobigot's Handbook" to do it!  An extremely offensive legal brief filed by the Department of Justice cites incest and adults marrying children as reasons why DOMA should be defended.

Pam Spaulding assays the situation on Pam's House Blend:  The real PR disaster for the administration is how can they explain away the virulent anti-gay defense it is presenting. Among the highlights offered by the "most pro-gay administration" in history...

* Obama administration invoked incest and people marrying children.
* The Obama admin argues that the incest and child rape cases therefore make DOMA constitutional
* DOMA is good because it saves the federal government money
* Gays have no constitutional right to marriage, or recognition of their marriages by other states
* The defense, by default, argues against Loving v. Virginia. For the child of an interracial marriage and a Constitutional scholar, this is beyond belief.
* Gays don't deserve same scrutiny in court that other minorities receive
* Provides legal argument against gays' right to privacy
* DOMA is rational and reasonable for our society

John Aravosis writes on AmericaBlog:  It reads as if it were written by one of George Bush's top political appointees. I cannot state strongly enough how damaging this brief is to us. Obama didn't just argue a technicality about the case, he argued that DOMA is reasonable. That DOMA is constitutional. That DOMA wasn't motivated by any anti-gay animus. He argued why our Supreme Court victories in Roemer and Lawrence shouldn't be interpreted to give us rights in any other area (which hurts us in countless other cases and battles). He argued that DOMA doesn't discriminate against us because it also discriminates about straight unmarried couples (ignoring the fact that they can get married and we can't)  He actually argued that the courts shouldn't consider Loving v. Virginia, the miscegenation case in which the Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to ban interracial marriages, when looking at gay civil rights cases. He told the court, in essence, that blacks deserve more civil rights than gays, that our civil rights are not on the same level.  And before Obama claims he didn't have a choice, he had a choice. Bush, Reagan and Clinton all filed briefs in court opposing current federal law as being unconstitutional (we'll be posting more about that later). Obama could have done the same.

This is the part of the opinion that calls forth incest:  See, e.g., Catalano v. Catalano, 170 A.2d 726, 728-29 (Conn. 1961) (marriage of uncle to niece, "though valid in Italy under its laws, was not valid in Connecticut because it contravened the public policy of th[at] state"); Wilkins v. Zelichowski, 140 A.2d 65, 67-68 (N.J. 1958) (marriage of 16-year-old female held invalid in New Jersey, regardless of validity in Indiana where performed, in light of N.J. policy reflected in statute permitting adult female to secure annulment of her underage marriage);

The DOJ's rabid defense of DOMA has been condemned in a joint statement from HRC, ACLU, GLAD, NGLTF, and Lambda Legal.  Part of their statement reads:  We are very surprised and deeply disappointed in the manner in which the Obama administration has defended the so-called Defense of Marriage Act against Smelt v. United States, a lawsuit brought in federal court in California by a married same-sex couple asking the federal government to treat them equally with respect to federal protections and benefits.  The administration is using many of the same flawed legal arguments that the Bush administration used.  These arguments rightly have been rejected by several state supreme courts as legally unsound and obviously discriminatory.

I'm not sure the DOJ's arguments sound like they were conceived by one of Dubya's appointees, as suggested by Aravosis and in the HRC statement. To me they sound like something the loathsome Reverend Rick Warren might come up with.  Or Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family.  Hell, all that was missing was a line saying "gays are worse than terrorists" and Sally Kern could've scribbled her name on the document.

Using incest and child rape cases to defend DOMA is reprehensible.  It's also heartbreaking to the millions of LGBT Americans who voted for Barack Obama and to the tens of thousands of us who worked tirelessly on his campaign. It's dispiriting to everyone in the country who foolishly believed the President's message of hope and change.

Comments

[Gaina]

I am sorry for you guys, but I knew I was right about him being a fake.

Seriously they should just change your voting proceadure to answering one question:

How diluted do you like your conservatives?

You don't seem to be getting any really choice or genuine change over there.

[Max P.]

You're so right, Gaina. Color me chastened.

I started this blog a year ago (almost to the day) and a lot of my pre-election posts were about how great Obama would be for the LGBT community.

He may turn out to be a good president - just not for us. I honestly don't believe Hillary Clinton would have thrown us under the bus like this. I know she wouldn't be bending over backwards to court religious conservatives.

[Aggie]

I think Obama is pulling a "Bill Clinton" here... I wonder if he isn't trying to gut the Right's only issue, marriage equality. If he co-opts their position (like Clinton did with welfare reform), they've got nothin'. This is also a crucial difference between "Left" and "Liberal"; liberals back as far as Wilson (maybe further) have proven they are not always the friends of the Left. I think it's a cold, calculated re-election ploy. Thoughts?

[Max P.]

Y'know Aggie, I wondered about that myself. Maybe Obama thinks that adopting the RW Christian's stance on most LGBT issues (in deeds if not in words), he'll be looked upon more kindly by conservative voters in 2012. I don't think he will be - but perhaps that's why he's backpedling on DOMA and DADT. He simply no longer cares about the gay vote.

[Doug Aigner]

Oh, I think it's even more crass than that, Max. Rahm Emanuel is whispering in his ear, "Who the hell else are THEY going to vote for?" The Obama White House knows that the LGBT community is not going to vote for Palin/Gingrich/Jindal/Bush/whatever. For them, it's win-win. It seems like someone, though, could make a sort of "patriotism" issue out of DADT, sort of beat the Right at their own game. Then, DOMA would be an absolute slam-dunk (The Michael Jordan kind, not the George Tennant kind).

[Max P.]

I'll tell ya, Doug. I certainly won't be wasting my time and money next time around.

[Bee Girl]

I've noticed on some supposedly liberal message boards that people are starting to accuse gays and lesbians of "whining" about this and making all kinds of justifications... like, it's not Obama's fault, blah blah blah. I can't believe the attitude of some Dems who seem just as eager to throw gays under the bus.

Obama is looking more like Bush-lite every day.

[Aggie]

It has to be political calculation on the Obama White House's part. Nothing else would explain the about-face on DADT and the DOMA. But, as Max points out, sheesh, it's fashioned in quite an ugly way. How vile, to equate pedophilia/incest with being able to marry another consenting adult. That being said, I predict the Obama administration is not done throwing people under the bus, a list which will probably include unions, the Palestinians, teachers, whistleblowers, etc. Obama is a neoliberal, just like, say, Tony Blair. So, you can mentally run with that as far as you'd like...