Obama's historic action against DOMA

[SidDithers]

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2011/02/obamas_historic_action_against.html

When the Supreme Court handed down its decision in Lawrence v. Texas in June 2003, a wave of euphoria rippled through the gay community across the country. Not only did the nation's highest court affirm their existence and their right to love without fear of criminal prosecution, but it also made the argument with powerful and moving language. The euphoria is back.

For the first time, the president of the United States and the chief law enforcement officer of the United States have said with one clear voice that a law which denies married same-sex couples equal protection under the Constitution is not only wrong but also unconstitutional. With one statement, the DOMA debate changed, and gay men and lesbians gained a powerful ally in court, armed with a powerful argument.This reversal was not taken lightly. It is longstanding practice for DOJ to defend the laws of the nation if reasonable arguments can be made. Yesterday, Justice announced there were no such arguments in the cases before a federal court in the Second Circuit.

In a six-page letter to House Speaker John Boehner yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that President Obama believed Section 3 of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and that his administration would no longer defend the repugnant statute in court. The president and the attorney general came to this conclusion after determining that gays and lesbians deserved a higher level of scrutiny in two new lawsuits challenging DOMA, which were filed in jurisdictions "without precedent on whether sexual-orientation classifications are subject to rational basis review or whether they must satisfy some form of heightened scrutiny."

Republicans and others are wondering why Obama is wading into a controversial social issue when his focus, they say, should be on taking the paddles to the economy and job creation. Last I checked, the president can and must do more than one thing at a time. More importantly, though, a March 11 filing deadline in those two cases demanded that the justice department take a stand. As Holder noted in his letter to Boehner, those lawsuits required DOJ to "take an affirmative position on the level of scrutiny" to be applied. Holder is doing his job and upholding the Constitution.

More good explanation of the intricacies of the decision at the link.

Sid