Obama's Justice Department Defends DOMA: My Thoughts

< This is not Justice

I was shocked to learn that two Department of Justice attorneys, Mormon leftovers from the Bush administration and with a history of defending homphobia, wrote a brief defending the Defense of Mariage Act and using terms i.e. incest and child molestation to rationalize their actions. Below is an excerpt from the Americablog by John Aravosis which goes into more detail about this despicable legal decision.

Some say Obama should have known better and others think he agrees with the arguments in this legal brief which speaks against our the federal court recognizing some Gay Marriages existing at the State court level. Obama must backtrack on this one and apologize to our community. I am not sure the damage this has caused can ever be undone unless Obama reverses himself and comes out for Gay Marriage which is unlikely. Some from our community and others are saying his decision is worse than what a lot of right wing Republicans are putting forth in the media on Gay Marriage. Even John McCain was quoted as saying if he had become President, he would be reconsidering his position on Gay Marriage. It is embarrassing that people like Cheney and politicians who worked with Rove seem more pro Gay Marriage than Obama.

I am clearly devastated by this state of affairs but feel this has been coming on since Obama took office. This is showdown time. I don't care if other issues have to take priority. The LGBT community must wake up, grow some spine, and get ahead of the Neanderthals on this issue. We must pressure the Obama folks to make a turn around or nothing will happen. It is a human rights issue. We deserve to be the priority especially given the shabby way we have been treated by Obama. I am very offended. By the way, my spouse and I were married and are still legally married in the State of California since Aug. 24, 2008. We are treated better by the average person we run into in our daily affairs than President Obama and his so called Justice Dept.

Sharon Raphael, Long Beach, Ca.

P.S. (NEW) Just read http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/06/outraged-by-obama-legal-brief-gay-democratic-donors-boycotting-dnc-bash.html which includes big Gay donors to the Democratic Party saying they will stop giving money to the DNC as a result of the vicious, my words, anti-Gay legal brief that came down from Obama 's Justice Dept. on DOMA. Right on. Aravosis who write Americablog says (paraphrasing) he doesn't think any Gay person should ever give one dime to the Democrats again after this fiasco. Some believe all this was purposeful. I am still willing to hold out hope, there will be a big reversal on Obama;s part meaning he will do something and say something together with doing. He first must aplogize for letting these lawyers for so called Justice defame our name.


Below is an excerpt from AmericaBlog by John Aravosis 6/12/2009 09:44:00 AM

Obama defends DOMA in federal court. Says banning gay marriage is good for the federal budget. Invokes incest and marrying children.
by John Aravosis (DC) on 6/12/2009 09:44:00 AM
UPDATE: Former top aide to President Clinton says DOJ had a choice, they did not have to file a brief in favor of DOMA.

UPDATE: Mormon Bush holdover helped write and file anti-gay DOMA brief.

UPDATE: Gay groups rip Obama.

UPDATE: Are gay politicians going to continue hosting gay pride fundraiser for Joe Biden?

UPDATE: Obama spokesman caught lying to Politico.

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).