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Chris Geidner at Metro Weekly has a report about a move the Obama Department of Justice made yesterday. The DOJ filed a brief arguing against the House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group's request to dismiss the constitutional challenge of the Defense of Marirage Act, brought by Karen Golinski and Lambda Legal in the Golinski v. United States Office of Personnel Management.
The brief is an expansive 31-page piece of fierce advocacy arguing that heighten scrutiny should apply to DOMA and it fails to meet the criteria necessary to survive. From Geidner's piece:
In describing why heightened scrutiny applies to classifications based on sexual orientation, the DOJ's lawyers — in describing how “gays and lesbians have been subject to a history of discrimination” — write, “The federal government has played a significant and regrettable role in the history of discrimination against gay and lesbian individuals.” The filing then goes on to detail the 1950 Senate resolution seeking an “investigation” into “homosexuals and other sexual perverts” in government employement, President Dwight Eisenhower's executive order adding “sexual perversion” as a ground for “possible dismissal from government service,” in the brief's words. It details the role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the U.S. Postal Service in investigations seeking information about government employees suspected of such “perversion.”
This is a welcome and rarely seen mea culp from our Federal Government in its role in perpetuating and validating discrimination against any Americans.
It's notable, too, that this language choice is entirely discretionary. The Department of Justice could filed a perfunctory brief and let the BLAG and Lambda Legal slug it out alone. Many presumed that was the course these cases might take.
That they have chosen to very actively, affirmatively engage in the fight for equality under the law is a very welcome turn around from the DOJ's unfortunate stance of 2009.
This is a BFD.
Joe Solomnese of Human Right Campaign has this to say:
“The Administration's decision to call DOMA what it is — a law that serves no purpose but to single out a group of people for second-class status — was a watershed moment in the fight for LGBT equality. Now the federal government has taken that historic stand a step further and put real meat on the bones of why there is no basis for DOMA to stand. This step represents real leadership from the Obama administration and further hastens the day in which we will leave this odious law in the dustbin of history.”
And he's right. Cheers to President Obama and Attorney General Holder for this move.
I encourage you to read Chris Geidner's article in it's entirety. And stay tuned. These DOMA fight is about to get real interesting.
21 Comments
Finally!3 years into his first (and only?) term, we get something like fierce advocacy from the president. It’s high time he remembered our community supported him in 2008. I suppose it would be possible to call this too little, too late, or to shrug it off as an election season stunt. And I’m sure there will be people who do so. But I honestly can’t think of a downside to this. Let’s give them full credit for what they’re doing, thanks for it, and keep our fingers crossed that this won’t be the last.
Excellent, just excellent.This is what our DOJ should look like. I couldn’t be more pleased.
For gawds sakeThis is the same case that the court ordered Obama to provide health benefits for the same-sex partner of the federal court employee and he instructed his Office of Professional Management to IGNORE the court order. Obama cited DOMA as his reason for non compliance. But, the judge ruled that DOMA didn’t apply.
Why the hell didn’t he just comply with the court order in the first place???????
I guess we hadn’t made a sufficient impression on the administration for him to comply.
Heartbreaking video relating to DOMA, needs to go viralThe Providence Journal has a heartbreaking video on its website that needs to be shared far and wide. The video is about a lesbian couple who live in RI and were married in Massachusetts a few years ago. One of the women, Pat Baker, was a correctional officer here in RI. Recently, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer and started to try to get her affairs in order, only to discover that her wife will not be eligible for Social Security after her death. She has been spending her remaining days doing everything she can think of to try to get that policy changed (which can only happen if DOMA is gone.) In the video, we see her meeting with her Congressman, James Langevin, who announced earlier this year that he now supports marriage equality after years of only supporting civil unions. Please watch it and share it far and wide:
http://bcove.me/iz6hdk6c
I guess he thinks he should be following the lawIf you don’t know how the court is going to rule on appeal then there is something to be said for not committing an impeachable offense that matches your own agenda, especially when the other party controls the House.
You seriously think the Senate might have voted to remove him from office?Really? There is and has never been any chance of that, and both Obama and the House leadership know it perfectly well.
Obama’s talking out of both sides of his mouth. Again. It just happens that this time it shakes out in our favor.
the judge ruled that DOMA didn’t apply as part of his initial ruling that ordered the administration to offer the benefits. Complying with the initial court order would have been complying with the law and not caused Obama any problem at all. So, if as you suggest, he thinks he should be following the law, then he would have followed the court’s order to offer health benefits to the same-sex spouse of the federal employee.
“impeachable” is a bit muchThe Presidency is not so fragile it could be taken down by the OPM mistakenly giving a lesbian Blue Cross Blue Shield. Let’s keep it reality based.
I don’t thinkthat complying with a valid judicial order can be properly referred to as a “mistake”. Especially since there would have been no appeal of the order if the government had complied.
If you read back throughmy comments on Obama, you’ll see that I don’t defend him, but maybe this was what he wanted all along?
If he’d complied with the order, we wouldn’t be here. The case would have ended. Instead he did something that he had to know was going to piss off the judiciary, and the case continued.
I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on this one. And maybe my vote in 2012, if he keeps it up.
I read the “brief”and Good Grief, I feel like I just read the Walker decision all over again, only with the arguments for heightened/strict scrutiny, which Walker didn’t even do. I actually agree that “rational basis” was enuf (as it was in both Lawrence and Romer, according to Mr Kennedy), but I don’t mind at all that ppl are now arguing for more.
Bring it on, finally, Mr Fierce Avocado.
It does a bit more than thatThe detailed history of government and judicial persecution is new. It’s not an apology, but at least an official acknowledgment of it. I haven’t seen that before in such depth.
Ah! Haven’t read full filing, but will today.I did see Chris's piece and just went WOW! But I concur “This is a BFD” says it better. I sent it to many LGBT activists who said basically just what WASH DC and nation does. They are 'taking the weekend off and haven't read it yet!' GAHHHHH! No wonder this is taking so long.Thanks to Whitehouse and DOJ…. THIS IS A BFD! … for all the reasons above, that is why I am posting here as 'reply'.
Oh, you think he was doing one of those 12 dimensional chess moves or executing another “secret plan”. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
So far all these secret plans and 12 dimensional chess games Obama continues to get credit for haven’t gained him much other than a HUGE loss in 2010 for democrats and a continuing parade of center-right policies.
Maybe he should change strategies.
Oh, you think he was doing one of those 12 dimensional chess moves or executing another “secret plan”. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL
So far all these secret plans and 12 dimensional chess games Obama continues to get credit for haven’t gained him much other than a HUGE loss in 2010 for democrats and a continuing parade of center-right policies.
Maybe he should change strategies.
PS Just a note re The Holiday Weekend.Here is link to a fine column from our local paper. This reporter/columnist usually writes a funny family weekend column. This one is NOT FUNNY.
re: Why we Celebrate the Fourth of July…
http://tinyurl.com/3deztu6
Generations beyond number had accepted the concept that monarchs, by their birth, had been chosen by God to be rulers, and newborn America said that common men were “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. That among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
This claim could not have been more revolutionary, in any sense of the word, and for its makers more deadly.
Writing these words made all of the men involved guilty of high treason in the eyes of the British crown. They had quite literally signed their own death warrants, a fact that was not lost on the declaration’s signatories.
Not surprising.This character is given to making ludicrous exaggerations like that. In one recent post he actually claimed that Obama has jumped off a building without a parachute for the gay community. http://www.pamshouseblend.com/… The guy’s definitely bananas, even by the generous standards you have to use for Obamabots.
Sorry if OTBut I don’t know where to put this. Anyone besides me not able to access Alliance Defense Fund’s website since NY marriage equality happened? I check on the religionist opposition from time to time and was curious about any reaction to this. They seem gone.
As near as it’s possible to judge,his hyper-dimensional chess strategy seems to consist of giving the Republicans everything they want (and in some cases even more than they asked for). While the move he’s made here is a welcome change form that, it’s definitely the exception, not the rule in this administration.
Why the hell?He hadn’t evolved that far yet. Still has a long way to go.