From Dafydd:
Incidentally, if Brietbart is to be believed (and why not?), it's not strictly true, as they reported above, that the Justice Department is "defending [DOMA] in court." In fact, towards the end of the story, we discover that they're doing so in such a half-hearted manner one might almost conclude they're intentionally sabotaging their own case, hoping to lose:
The administration also disavowed past arguments made by conservatives that DOMA protects children by defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
"The United States does not believe that DOMA is rationally related to any legitimate government interests in procreation and child-rearing and is therefore not relying upon any such interests to defend DOMA's constitutionality," lawyers argued in the filing.
They begin by throwing into the dustbin of politics a very powerful argument for DOMA that could easily sway the federal courts, and the absence of which could destroy the case.
[Update: NOM has more on this.]
Obama's administration is deliberately eliding the actual disagreement about marriage. This is precisely what pro-SSM court opinions have done -- whether they be written in dissent or in plurality or in majority.
ReplyDeleteOnce can hope that the court will permit NOM and other marriage defenders represent the pro-DOMA side. Obama is not going to do it; he is playing the role of what's-hiz-name -- the AG -- in California during the marriage amendment case.
This duplicity is what SSMers meant when they ignored the pro-marriage remarks Obama made during the election campaign.