Obama Administration's Latest Stance on Gay Marriage

On the evening of June 11th the United States Department of Justice filed a motion to dismiss in a lawsuit filed in district court in California challenging sections 2 and 3 of DOMA on behalf of a gay couple legally married in California. Here is a link to the motion. Associated Press reporting on the motion. LGBT legal organizations released a statement the following day condemning the defense of DOMA, particularly the Bush era-esque language used by the DOJ. The full statement from the organizations is below. You can also find the statement on GLAD's website. Reporting from CBSNews, ABCNews, and The Wall Street Journal. Additionally, an editorial was published in The New York Times on June 15th criticizing the DOJ's decision to defend the law so vigorously.



LGBT Legal and Advocacy Groups Decry Obama Administration's Defense of DOMA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: June 12, 2009
Contact: Carisa Cunningham, GLAD (617) 426-1350

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.

We disagree with many of the administration’s arguments, for example that DOMA is a valid exercise of Congress’s power, is consistent with Equal Protection or Due Process principles, and does not impinge upon rights that are recognized as fundamental.
We are also extremely disturbed by a new and nonsensical argument the administration has advanced suggesting that the federal government needs to be “neutral” with regard to its treatment of married same-sex couples in order to ensure that federal tax money collected from across the country not be used to assist same-sex couples duly married by their home states. There is nothing “neutral” about the federal government’s discriminatory denial of fair treatment to married same-sex couples: DOMA wrongly bars the federal government from providing any of the over one thousand federal protections to the many thousands of couples who marry in six states. This notion of “neutrality” ignores the fact that while married same-sex couples pay their full share of income and social security taxes, they are prevented by DOMA from receiving the corresponding same benefits that married heterosexual taxpayers receive. It is the married same-sex couples, not heterosexuals in other parts of the country, who are financially and personally damaged in significant ways by DOMA. For the Obama administration to suggest otherwise simply departs from both mathematical and legal reality.
When President Obama was courting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender voters, he said that he believed that DOMA should be repealed. We ask him to live up to his emphatic campaign promises, to stop making false and damaging legal arguments, and immediately to introduce a bill to repeal DOMA and ensure that every married couple in America has the same access to federal protections.

SIGNED:
American Civil Liberties Union
Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders
Lambda Legal
National Center for Lesbian Rights
Human Rights Campaign
The Task Force