In an unexpected move (particularly in the midst of the Libyan
crisis), President Obama signaled that he thinks the Defense of
Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional, and he has instructed
Attorney General Eric Holder and the Justice Department (DOJ) to
cease defending cases brought against DOMA. The wording of this
surprise announcement suggests that the decision is another
instance of this president’s politicizing the administration of
justice: the White House ordering the Justice Department what it
should do in order to appeal to the extreme elements of its
political base. So much for Obama’s pivot to the middle, not that
there was much doubt about that after his kowtowing to the unions
in the Wisconsin imbroglio.
The president declared that Section 3 of DOMA
(the part that prohibits the federal government from recognizing
same-sex “marriages”) “violates the equal protection component” of
the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution. This is the
president’s latest bow to “gay” rights activists and his latest
move out of mainstream values over to far-left policies that
undermine the nation’s foundations and social structure. This is
but the president’s latest move to disregard the laws of this
country; he has repeatedly put his radical ideology and personal
preferences ahead of the expressed will of the nation’s citizens.
He seems determined to shape America into his image, regardless of
what voters want or what the Constitution and national laws
state.
DOMA clearly specifies the accepted national definition of
marriage as for one man and one woman and protects individual
states from being forced to recognize same-sex “marriages”
performed in other states. In the past, the Department of Justice
has routinely defended laws with which any given administration may
disagree; that past practice makes the current decision even more
offensive. In effect, our constitutional law professor-in-chief has
decreed — based on his superior knowledge, and without the benefit
of hearing any counter arguments — that there is “no reasonable
defense” of DOMA and that the law is, by its very nature,
“discriminatory.”
The decision affects two suits in Massachusetts —
Gill et. al. v. Office of Personnel Management and
Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. United States Department of
Health and Human Services. In both cases, the plaintiffs
questioned the constitutionality of the definition of marriage
being reserved to a legal union between a man and a woman. To add
“insult to injury” in presenting the president’s action, Holder
told House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) that Congress’ action in
passing DOMA implies “moral disapproval of gays and lesbians and
their intimate and family relationships.” Further, Holder added
that this kind of “stereotypical-based [sic] thinking and animus”
is exactly why the Equal Protection Clause exists.
In the past, President Obama has not acted on his
rhetorical support for the repeal of DOMA, a stance that was
unpopular with his liberal base. Now, like the
activist liberal judges, he is totally ignoring the damage to the
standing of the courts by defying the will of the people regarding
the nature of marriage (voters booted three Iowa State Supreme
Court justices out of office in 2010 for tampering with the
definition of marriage). In many respects, the
president’s action is a full-employment act for self-identified
homosexual lawyers, because the law is still on the books and the
president just took the Justice Department attorneys off the
case.
There is reason to conclude that the president acted now,
before the 2012 election and while he has federal Supreme Court
justices who will back his opinion on the issue of so-called
same-sex “marriage,” because the unrest both
nationally (Wisconsin and Indiana) and internationally (Egypt and
Libya) will take the media headlines and he can “get away
with” the decision no longer to defend DOMA in court because it
will be “below the fold” in the nation’s
newspapers.
While the president’s action does not mean that DOMA is
illegal, it does mean that the president has decided to trade in
his claim to be post-partisan in order to become a general in the
culture war’s assault on traditional values. Also, at a time when
the nation is buried under a mountain of debt and deficits are at
oxygen-depriving heights, this decision begs the action of
“following the money.” At stake are numerous (some say thousands)
of benefits that are limited to married couples. The government has
a vested interest in encouraging marriage and the establishment of
families to protect and nurture children and, thus, provide for the
nation’s future. It does not have a similar vested interest in
encouraging same-sex sexual relationships which are high-risk,
dysfunctional, and entail consequences that, ultimately, are a
drain on both the national treasury and the nation’s social
infrastructure.
While the president should be working to reverse
unemployment and curb spending, he is, instead, working to give
short-term same-sex alliances the dignity of the “marriage” label,
thus entitling those in temporary same-sex sexual relationships to
taxpayer funding.
