Obama Still Against Gay Marriage, Except In Court

The Great Waffler, waffles again. Surprise! surprise!

Gay marriage. Barack Obama was against it before he was against laws that are against it even though he is still, mostly, against it.

President Obama needs to realize he is the chief executive and as chief executive, it is his job to enforce the law as written, not as he wants.

While I strongly disagree with the Defense of Marriage Act, it is still the law and until it is overturned by a court or by legislation, it is to be defended in court. We are a land of laws, not the opinions of men (or women). The Justice Department needs to defend this law if challenged in court.

As for myself, I think the law violates the Constitution, as it allows a state to not observe the recognition of contracts of other states and it is an intrusion of the Federal Government into an area reserved for the states. As far as Gays getting married, if they want to, I don’t care, I’m not gay, and if Gays want to get married, as Thomas Jefferson once said, “It neither breaks my leg, nor picks my pocket.”

It is time for President Obama to stop sitting on the fence and have some courage to take a stand.

It isn’t a matter of “realizing” this. Hell, just two months ago the WH was telling us that they had to argue the Constitutionality of DADT. It is mind-boggling that on another gay-related Constitutional issue the administration would take the opposite position vis-a-vis the discretion to argue for the constitutionality of laws even though Obama publicly supported the repeal of DADT but won’t support gay marriage.
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To paraphrase Wolfgang Pauli, not only is Obama not right, he’s not even wrong! I have no idea what this administration is talking about.
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What really kills me is that I know that, right now, WH staffers are high-fiving each other because they “nailed the nuance”.

Let’s be clear here. There is no constitutional requirement for the DOJ to defend laws on the books. And The executive with the DOJ agreeing that a law is unconstitutional and not defending is not without precedent.

And for those thinking that this is a flip flop of some kind. Obama has always been against DOMA and wanted it repealed and has held this position since the campaign. And while he may be against gay marriage he has always said it is a issue for the states and not the Fed.

Why are people so dense? Don’t you all see the methodical march forward? Don’t you see it will be much easier to approach this now, after the repeal of DADT? Don’t you also see that the POTUS (any POTUS) has to uphold laws? Of course he supported the law until it was repealed. And now, we have a first step in, methodically, ripping down DOMA.

Clever headline, I guess. He’s always been for civil unions, which is the legal recognition of couplehood. “Marriage” is a religious word, about which the President probably doesn’t need to have an opinion one way or the other.

Many people can’t (or won’t) equate a gay marriage with one between opposite sexes (that whole male & female thing, blessed by God, y’know). It will probably boil down to a privacy issue. Would it bother me if it ever does get equated with “straight” marriage? I guess that’s a question to which man just can’t give a straight answer. Pun intended.

I wonder if you could be personally opposed to something, say abortion, and still believe that Constitutionally-guaranteed liberty rights prevent the government from coercing a woman to bear a child against her will.
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I guess not if you’ve lost the ability to discern real hypocrisy which, unlike liberalism, has a strong “conservative” bias.

Anytime DOMA comes up I think of what Paul Wellstone wrote in “Conscience of a Liberal”.
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“What troubles me is that I may not have cast the right vote on DOMA,” he writes. “I might have rationalized my vote by making myself believe that my honest position was opposition. This vote was an obvious trap for a senator like me, who was up for reelection. Did I convince myself that I could gleefully deny Republicans this opportunity? . . . When Sheila and I attended a Minnesota memorial service for Mathew Shepard, I thought to myself, ‘Have I taken a position that contributed to a climate of hatred?’ . . . I still wonder if I did the right thing.”
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He later concluded he did not.

What? Next you’ll expect me to defend people’s right to eat certain flavors of ice cream that I don’t personally enjoy! I am steadfast in my principles, sir. When I dislike something, or disapprove of it, or even when I greet the topic with indifference, I expect all to go along with me!

If the president DOMA is unconstitutional and discriminatory against American citizens, why won’t he come out in support of the natural policy that would extend from this belief; legalized gay marriage across America? Obama needs to drop the political posturing and state his core beliefs concerning same-sex rights…
http://www.sunstateactivist.org

“He later concluded he did not.”
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And that’s how it goes with womens’ childrens’ and minority rights through the arc of history. First, liberals support them, then centrists eventually come around, then “conservatives”…fight them tooth and nail.

I am hard pressed to understand what his personal beliefs have to do with any of this. So far, as slow as it may have been, his personal beliefs have not stood in the way of doing the right thing when it comes to the LGBT community.

President Obama has told the Justice Department to stop defending the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act
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I don’t think that’s correct, Michael. See: http://www.scotusblog.com/2011/02/u-s-says-doma-ban-invalid/
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With the approval of President Obama, U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr., notified Congress on Wednesday that the federal government will now argue in court that it is unconstitutional to withhold all federal benefits from same-sex couples who are legally married under their own state’s law. While the government will continue to enforce that part of the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, Holder said a new evaluation has convinced officials that it violates the Constitution’s guarantee of legal equality. … Holder said he had conducted a new review and concluded that laws treating people differently based on sexual orientation must satisfy a higher constitutional standard — “heightened scrutiny.” Applying that approach to DOMA’s Section 3, Holder said, he and the President had decided that it will not survive that level of scrutiny. Holder suggested in his letter to Congress that if lawmakers wished to take a different position, they were free to file briefs in pending cases to say so.

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This has nothing to do with Obama’s position on gay marriage, as I read it. It’s about federal law that conflicts with state law, imposing a bad thing on people on the basis of their sexual orientation.
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The administration– agreeing with some existing case law, disagreeing with conflicting law– is of the view that laws targeting people on the basis of sexual orientation should be subject to heightened scrutiny, not rational basis review. On the basis of that analysis, the DOJ will argue before courts that Section 3 of the Act denying Federal benefits to spouses lawfully married in their own jurisdictions is unconstitutional; but until Congress or the legislature repeals it, federal agencies will enforce the law as written.

Not sure I see the daylight between “stop defending the constitutionality” and “argue in court that it is unconstitutional.” I agree that it is possible to hold a negative view of legalizing same sex marriage, while at the same time arguing that a law that bans recognition of same sex marriage is unconstitutional, which is the Obama position. Don’t think my post contradicts that.

Remember, California’s Prop 8 is on the way to the Supreme Court.
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I wish people would realize “marriage” can be accomplished by both a civil and/or a religious ceremony. Stopping gay civil marriages is against our basic freedoms. If a church determines not to bless a gay union, that is their choice.

Thanks for replying, Michael. It seems to me that this decision was not to tell “the Justice Department to stop defending the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act.” It was rather to stop defending the constitutionality of Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act as applied to same-sex couples who are legally married under state law, if a heightened level of scrutiny is applied. Section 2 remains untouched by this letter; also, if courts decide, over the DOJ’s argument, that rational basis review is appropriate, the DOJ remains of the view that it is constitutional, and will defend it.
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Here’s Holder’s letter to Congress (caution: auto print dialogue box popup) http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Holder-letter-re-DOMA-2-23-11.htm

I will instruct the Department’s lawyers to immediately inform the district courts in Windsor and Pedersen of the Executive Branch’s view that heightened scrutiny is the appropriate standard of review and that, consistent with that standard, Section 3 of DOMA may not be constitutionally applied to same-sex couples whose marriages are legally recognized under state law. If asked by the district courts in the Second Circuit for the position of the United States in the event those courts determine that the applicable standard is rational basis, the Department will state that, consistent with the position it has taken in prior cases, a reasonable argument for Section 3’s constitutionality may be proffered under that permissive standard.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/02/same-sex_couple_denied_entry_to_creation_museum_da.php?ref=fpb
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Be careful trying to get admission to a Creation Museum if they think you are a gay couple.

So much for his move to the center.
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– Chris Matthews

Looks like the centrists are still on the wrong side of the arc.

well I must comment on this however

as far as religious ceremony is concerned, you could get a church, synagogue, las vagas fast-marriage shop, or a hobo in a clown suit to perform a religious ceremony making you married, civilly unified, or becoming partners. Hell, LGBT people can say whatever they want about their relationship, freedom of speech all the way.

what they don’t have is that pretty pink piece of paper saying that they are now husband, wife, or partner, and even moreso, all the strings attached. For example, next of kin in court, parent/guardian status, tax exemptions, and all the rest.

The first paragraph cannot be contested by law, and the second is one of the largest social issues of our decade.