June 12, 2009
Task Force, ACLU, HRC, EQCA Reactions to Obama’s “Kitchen Sink” DOMA Defense
Backstory: “Obama Defends DOMA; Invokes Incest, Rape, Child Marriage; Ditches Loving, Roemer, & Lawrence; And More That Will Make You Sick to Your Stomach,” June 12, 2009
The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund again calls for immediate repeal of the federal “Defense of Marriage Act.” The Task Force Action Fund also denounces the egregious language used by the Department of Justice in its recent brief seeking to dismiss a challenge to DOMA.
Statement by Rea Carey, Executive Director National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Action Fund:
“DOMA is and has always been an immoral attack on same-sex couples, our families and our fundamental humanity. This law has only served to discriminate against Americans and belittle our nation’s heralded values embracing freedom, fairness and justice. The Task Force Action Fund demands President Obama and Congress immediately repeal this hateful law, which has left a moral scar on our nation and its worthy pursuit of equal justice for all.
“Unfortunately, the malicious and outrageous arguments and language used in the Department of Justice’s marriage brief is only serving to inflame and malign the humanity of same-sex couples and our families. This is unacceptable.
“This ugly chapter in our nation’s history must come to an end now with the repeal of DOMA.”
We are very surprised and deeply disappointed in the manner in which the Obama administration has defended the so-called Defense of Marriage Act in a brief filed today in 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 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.
“We call on the President to send legislation repealing DOMA to Congress,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese
The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) civil rights organization, issued a statement today regarding the Obama Administration’s decision to defend the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act in a lawsuit filed on behalf of a gay couple who married in California. Arthur Smelt and Christopher Hammer, who were married in California on July 10, 2008, filed a suit in federal court in December challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The Administration responded yesterday.
“The Administration apparently determined that it had a duty to defend DOMA in the courts. The President has just as strong a duty to put his principles into action, and end discrimination against LGBT people and our families,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese. “We call on the President to send legislation repealing DOMA to Congress,” he added.
Since taking office in January, President Obama has taken bold steps to deliver on principles and promises he articulated during his campaign. In just his first six months in office, President Obama has signed the Lily Ledbetter Act into law, paved the way for life-saving stem cell research, eliminated barriers to women’s health and reproductive care abroad, expanded insurance coverage for millions of children, ended the torture of detainees, and called for the notorious prison at Guantanamo Bay to be closed. However, this community is frustrated by the Administration’s silence, until today, on a critical matter that the President voiced support for during his campaign-repealing DOMA.
“President Obama must see that this extraordinary record of commitment to the public good at last be extended to end discrimination against LGBT people,” said Solmonese. “Mr. President, you have called DOMA ‘abhorrent’ and pledged to be a fierce advocate for our community. As we approach the 40th anniversary of Stonewall, it is time for you to use your leadership to translate these principles into meaningful action.”
HRC also has grave concerns about the arguments that the Administration put forth in this case, arguments that simply do not reflect the experiences that LGBT people face or the contributions that they make. The Administration’s brief claims 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. The brief further claims that DOMA is a “neutral” federal position on same-sex marriages, and permits the states to determine on their own whether to recognize same-sex marriages. The most alarming argument, grounded neither in fact nor in law, reads as follows:
[DOMA amounts to] a cautious policy of federal neutrality towards a new form of marriage. DOMA maintains federal policies that have long sought to promote the traditional and uniformly-recognized form of marriage, recognizes the right of each State to expand the traditional definition if it so chooses, but declines to obligate federal taxpayers in other States to subsidize a form of marriage that their own states do not recognize.
“Same-sex couples and their families are not seeking subsidies,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese. “We pay taxes equally, contribute to our communities equally, support each other equally, pay equally into Social Security, and participate equally in our democracy. Equal protection is not a handout. It is our right as citizens,” he said.
In a recent California Federal Court challenge filed by a couple legally married in California, the United States Department of Justice under the direction of President Barack Obama filed a brief supporting the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and justifying discrimination in government benefits against same-sex couples. In response, Equality California (EQCA) Executive Director Geoff Kors released the following statement:
“We are outraged the Obama Administration filed a brief defending the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act - a law Obama promised to repeal when running for President. It is unacceptable that he is defending DOMA instead of supporting its repeal as unconstitutional. And the justification that Congress has the right to deny one minority equal benefits as a way to save money is truly offensive. We not only call on President Obama to order the Justice Department to file a supplemental brief reversing its position and instead urging the repeal of DOMA, but we also demand the president demonstrates that he is the ‘fierce’ advocate he once claimed to be by publicly calling for the end to all discrimination against LGBT Americans - including the immediate repeal of this law so same-sex couples legally married in their home state receive the same federal benefits and protections as opposite-sex couples.”
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Filed Under: Barack Obama, California, Civil Rights, Hate Speech, Homophobia, LGBT Organizations, Marriage, Press Releases
