Good News: Obama Stops Defending Indefensible "Marriage Act"
LatestThe Obama Justice Department has announced it will no longer fight for the Defense of Marriage Act in court. Gay rights advocates had long been infuriated that despite the administration’s opposition to it, government lawyers were still defending in court the act that prohibits federal recognition of gay marriage.
A statement from the Attorney General today said, “While the President opposes DOMA and believes it should be repealed, the Department has defended it in court because we were able to advance reasonable arguments under that rational basis standard.” A more recent case in the Second Circuit, the statement said, led the President to conclude that “given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny. The President has also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional.” Section 3 is the part that defines marriage as “only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.”