June 12, 2009

Obama Defends DOMA; Invokes Incest, Rape, Child Marriage; Ditches Loving, Roemer, & Lawrence; And More That Will Make You Sick to Your Stomach

Dear Obama Supporters: I won’t wait for your apology. But you owe me one. A big one.

Just read — but don’t weep. Be pissed — at Obama, and at yourself if you voted for him in the primaries, and especially if you voted for him in the primaries and ever called anyone who disagreed with you a racist, a Hillbot, a Repuke troll, a PUMA, or any of your other terms of affection for anyone who dared warn you that Obama was a right-winger in a nice suit.

I get no satisfaction in saying, for the umpteenth time: I TOLD YOU SO.

Two articles/links after the jump, with more to come.

Aravosis:

Obama defends DOMA in federal court. Says banning gay marriage is good for the federal budget. Invokes incest and marrying children.

Joe and I have been trying since last night to get a copy of the government’s brief just filed in this case. This is not the GLAD case that we’ve written about previously, it’s another in California.

We just got the brief from reader Lavi Soloway. It’s ~~pretty~~ despicable, and gratuitously homophobic. 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. But instead he chose to defend DOMA, denigrate our civil rights, go back on his promises, and contradict his own statements that DOMA was “abhorrent.” Folks, Obama’s lawyers are even trying to diminish the impact of Roemer and Lawrence, our only two big Supreme Court victories. Obama is quite literally destroying our civil rights gains with this brief. He’s taking us down for his own benefit.

Holy cow. Obama invoked incest and people marrying children.

Read the guts of the brief at the link, which Aravosis quotes at length, and breaks down into such arguments as:

• Incest and child rape cases make DOMA constitutional;

• DOMA is good because it saves the feds money;

• DOMA is constitutional (thus screwing us on any future lawsuits);

• DOMA is consistent with Equal Protection and Due Process principles;

• Gays have no constitutional right to marriage, or recognition of their marriages by other states;

• Praises DOMA as “cautiously limited”;

• Obama [comes] out against the Loving v. VA case that ensured that people like his parents could marry;

• Gays don’t deserve same scrutiny in court that other minorities get;

• Argues Republican position on how judges should review cases;

• Provides legal argument against gays’ right to privacy;

• It’s reasonable and rational for Congress to defend “traditional” marriage - in fact, DOMA was actual a very “neutral” law, rather than anti-gay;

• Please don’t confuse the gays with the blacks, and other “real” marriages;

• and much, much, much more, that will make your head spin, and your stomach churn.

Aravosis, update:

Obama DOJ lies to Politico in defending hate brief against gays

Ben Smith at Politico just reported the following statement from the Department of Justice over their brief, filed last night, comparing gay marriage to incest:

As it generally does with existing statutes, the Justice Department is defending the law on the books in court. The president has said he wants to see a legislative repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act because it prevents LGBT couples from being granted equal rights and benefits. However, until Congress passes legislation repealing the law, the administration will continue to defend the statute when it is challenged in the justice system.

Yeah, you see, that’s an outright lie. Fortunately for you, and unfortunately for Justice, Joe and I are both lawyers. We suspected this betrayal was coming, so we read up on the law. In fact, George W. Bush (ACLU et al., v. Norman Y. Mineta - “The U.S. Department of Justice has notified Congress that it will not defend a law prohibiting the display of marijuana policy reform ads in public transit systems.”), Bill Clinton (Dickerson v. United States - “Because the Miranda decision is of constitutional dimension, Congress may not legislate a contrary rule unless this Court were to overrule Miranda…. Section 3501 cannot constitutionally authorize the admission of a statement that would be excluded under this Court’s Miranda cases.”), George HW Bush (Metro Broadcasting v. Federal Communications Commission), and Ronald Reagan (INS v./ Chadha - “Chadha then filed a petition for review of the deportation order in the Court of Appeals, and the INS joined him in arguing that § 244(c)(2) is unconstitutional.”) all joined in lawsuits opposing federal laws that they didn’t like, laws that they felt were unconstitutional. It is an outright lie to suggest that the DOJ had no choice.

But it’s worse than that. Let’s just assume for a moment that the Justice spokesman didn’t lie to Politico, even though they did. Let’s just assume that Obama had no choice but to oppose the gay couple filing this DOMA lawsuit. Where in the law does it say that Obama was required to compare gay marriage to incest?

And putting that little bit of religious right messaging aside, even if they “had” to file the brief against us, why didn’t they just file a brief that argued the technicalities about why the case should have been thrown out (e.g., the plaintiffs had no standing)? No, what Obama did was throw the legal kitchen sink at us in a brief that could have been written by Antonin Scalia. …

No. The Obama administration didn’t just lie to Politico, Obama lied to our community, or he lied to the court. But you don’t publicly call yourself a “fierce advocate” for gay rights, and then compare married gays to incest. You don’t make your first official legal statement on gay rights an outright attack on the underpinnings of our entire civil rights.

Our president had a choice. And he chose to throw us under the bus, and then knife us for good measure.

PS And here’s another lie from the Justice spokesman:

The president has said he wants to see a legislative repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act because it prevents LGBT couples from being granted equal rights and benefits.

In fact, Obama argued last night that DOMA does not deny gays any rights or benefits…