he Obama administration has consistently asserted that the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is discriminatory ; Moreover, President Obama has vowed to work for its repeal. Nonetheless, the Obama Justice Department has recently again defended the law in a court filing.
In response to a lawsuit by Massachusetts Attorney GeneralMartha M. Coakley, the Justice Department argued yesterday in court papers that states allowing gay marriage can’t force the federal government to provide benefits to those couples.The state of Massachusetts has challenged DOMA, saying it denies federal marriage benefits to same-sex couples that are nonetheless legally married under Massachusetts law. Around 16,000 same-sex couples married in Massachusetts are being unfairly denied federal benefits given to heterosexual couples, according to Coakley’s suit. Those benefits include federal income tax credits, employment benefits, retirement benefits, health insurance coverage and Social Security payments
Massachusetts officials also say the federal law requires them to disregard the legally valid same-sex marriages in their state in relation to carrying out federal Medicaid and Veterans’ benefits programs. Such a requirement, they say, violates state sovereignty and is unconstitutional.
“This administration does not support DOMA as a matter of policy, believes that it is discriminatory, and supports its repeal,” says yesterdays Justice Department brief.
Nevertheless, Obama’s DOJ says, it has “long followed the practice of defending federal statutes as long as reasonable arguments can be made in support of their constitutionality, even if the Department disagrees with a particular statute, as it does here.”
This, from AmericaBlog Gay, to me, sums up what I have intuited from the very start: That Obama, does not want to support the gay movement, but wants to seem as though he is, while he bides his time and puts them off. Sort of like a woman who is being pursued by a man she does not like, but does not want him to know this just yet. . .
How self-deluding are gay activists, then? Is this willful shutting one's eyes, pretending not to see what one really does see - and more importantly, what one knows is headed toward dangerous waters - and all such behavior on the part of gay activists a real deficit in this regard: That seeing, they do not see, and hearing, they do not hear? Obama could not be more obvious if he tried.
States that allow gay marriage can't force the federal government to provide benefits to those couples, the Obama administration argued Friday in court papers in a lawsuit by Massachusetts.
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