President Obama’s DOMA Outrage Will Backfire

by MAGGIE GALLAGHER 

By refusing to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), by calling it “legally indefensible,” by inventing a new constitutional doctrine (i.e., that sexual orientation is a protected class) never accepted by the Supreme Court, by rejecting controlling Supreme Court precedent in Baker v. Nelson on marriage, by nakedly politicizing the Justice Department, by nationalizing the marriage question and forcing major GOP leaders and presidential candidates to act, President Obama is not only helping build up a national marriage movement — he has actually made it far more likely the Supreme Court will ultimately vote to uphold DOMA.

Obama, living in an increasing bubble, must have started believing those press releases and New York Times headlines saying Americans don’t care about marriage anymore. He must have calculated that Congress would not respond to his outrageous dereliction of duty.

Instead, Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, today announced that the House will act to intervene in the DOMA legal cases. This is a huge victory for marriage — and hugely important to winning these cases in the Supreme Court.

The federal Defense of Marriage Act does two simple things: It defines marriage for federal law as the union of husband and wife, and it clarifies that states are not required to recognize “gay marriage” performed in other states.

Neither of these DOMA provisions is extraordinary or unusual in any way. The federal law has often defined terms like “marriage” and “parent” differently from state law for a number of purposes — such as immigration, for example. Back in the 19th century, when the issue was polygamy, numerous courts upheld the federal government’s right to define marriage in federal territory as one man and one woman. And states are already permitted to refuse to recognize marriages that contradict that state’s marriage policy.

But DOMA lost at the trial-court level in the First Circuit — in large part because no one in that court room mounted a serious defense of the statute.

Obama’s Department of Justice was quietly undermining the law by presenting only enormously weak arguments approved by the gay legal lobby. (This is not just my opinion. In a very public brouhaha, the Department of Justice suddenly pulled one legal brief because gay activists objected to its legal reasoning — and substituted a far weaker brief they approved.)

Marriage is a union of husband and wife because these unions really are unique: They make new life and connect children in love to their mother and father. No other union can do this, or serve the common good in this unique way.

The idea driving “gay marriage” is the idea that “gay is like black” and that opposition to homosexual marriage is like opposition to interracial marriage. Intellectually, this is an utter misnomer. It’s not discrimination to treat different things differently. Two men cannot fulfill the public purpose of marriage; indeed, their inclusion in the pool of married couples will undermine the very idea that marriage has a clear public purpose, rooted in the natural family and in the need for responsible procreation.

This week, some grim news from Great Britain confirms where we are headed if we do not summon the will to defend the goodness of our marriage laws: A black Pentecostal married couple who had taken great care of foster kids for years was told by the British court they could no longer be foster parents because they do not believe in gay sexual relationships. Christians need not apply to care for children — because the court ruled protecting sexual orientation trumps religious liberty.

Fortunately, Obama went from playing an insider’s game that was hard to expose in public to a big public gesture that makes the stakes clearer and clearer.

The bad news is: This is an incredible dereliction of duty by a sitting president.

The good news is: The chances we will win this fight just went way up.

Maggie Gallagher is the president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy and chairman of the board of the National Organization for Marriage

Courtesy of http://www.ncregister.com/daily-news/president-obamas-doma-outrage-will-backfire/

Obama Proclaiming Lesbians,Gay,Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month, Pushes Repeal of Defense of Marriage Act

(CNSNews.com) – Citing his commitment to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), President Obama on Friday issued a proclamation declaring June 2010 “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month.”
 
The president also emphasized his intention to secure “adoption rights” for same-sex couples and end both employment discrimination against LGBT individuals as well as the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) compromise that bars homosexuals from serving openly in the military.
 
This is the second year that President Obama has declared June LGBT Pride Month, but it is the first time he has used the proclamation to call for repeal of DOMA.

“We see again president Obama trying to walk a tightrope on the marriage issue,” said Peter Sprigg, a senior fellow with Family Research Council. Obama “says we must give committed gay couples the same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, [but] he doesn’t say right out that we should change the definition of marriage,” Sprigg  noted.
 
Although Obama has said he does not favor same-sex marriage, “every policy he supports is designed to undermine the traditional definition of marriage or undermine the uniqueness of marriage as the union between a man and a woman. So I think we just see again the inherent contradiction in President Obama’s position in the same-sex marriage issue,” Sprigg said.
 
Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition, told CNSNews.com, “We have a nation that’s facing great unemployment, and economic crisis” as well as the flooding in Nashville and the Gulf oil spill, “and what is the president pushing? Gay transgender stuff and gays in the military, when Americans don’t care about any of this. These are not priorities….  But they’ve been pushed ahead of dealing with the economy, pushed ahead of dealing with the Gulf disaster.”
 
“It doesn’t come as a surprise to me,” said Lafferty, “because [the president] clearly stated his support for gay marriage, clearly stated his support for gays in the military, for pushing the so-called Employment Non-Discrimination Act and so-called hate crimes. I think a lot of people who voted for him aren’t aware of some of these positions.”
 
Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, lauded the president’s proclamation in a statement sent to CNSNews.com: “President Obama is right when he says that ‘we must give committed gay couples the same rights and responsibilities’ as any couple — and that includes the freedom to marry.” 
 
According to Wolfson, “Couples who have made a commitment in life should have an equal commitment under the law, with the same rules, same responsibilities, and same respect. In America we believe in treating others as we’d want to be treated.  The government should not discriminate when it comes to who can get a marriage license.”
 
The president’s proclamation states in part, “Much work remains to fulfill our Nation’s promise of equal justice under law for LGBT Americans. That is why we must give committed gay couples the same rights and responsibilities afforded to any married couple, and repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.”
 
When it passed in 1996, DOMA had bipartisan support in both the House and Senate. It passed the House on a vote of 342-67 with 120 Democrats voting for it. In the Senate, DOMA passed 85-14, with 32 Democrat backers.
 
Obama’s proclamation also says, “We must protect the rights of LGBT families by securing their adoption rights, ending employment discrimination against LGBT Americans, and ensuring Federal employees receive equal benefits… I am also committed to ending “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” so patriotic LGBT Americans can serve openly in our military…”
 
Regarding adoption rights, Sprigg pointed to “an abundance of social science research that shows that children do best when raised by biological mother and father who are committed to each other in a lifelong marriage.”
 
Because of this, Sprigg says, “There should be a strong preference, if not an outright requirement, that children be placed with a married mother and father in order to give them that male and female role model, which is so important for their development.”
 
Both Sprigg and Lafferty said the president’s LGBT agenda will trample states’ rights. Sprigg noted that adoption is a state matter, and that any federal law probably would conflict with the laws of several states.
 
Likewise, Lafferty noted that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) “will override the laws of 38 states, telling school districts that they must comply and hire transgender individuals, and it will be illegal to reassign them.” 
 
Last year’s proclamation commemorated the 40^th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City, which many activists consider the start of the “gay rights” movement.  And while last year’s presidential proclamation included similar language regarding adoption rights and ending employment discrimination and DADT, the 2009 proclamation made no mention of DOMA.
 
President Obama’s 2010 proclamation, issued on the Friday before the long Memorial Day weekend, says, “As we honor the LGBT Americans who have given so much to our Nation, let us remember that if one of us is unable to realize full equality, we all fall short of our founding principles.”
 
Because it is lower priority on the Democrat Party’s agenda than DADT and ENDA, Sprigg doesn’t believe legislation to repeal DOMA will come up this year.

Courtesy of http://cnsnews.com/news/article/66952