Fri, 06/12/2009 - 5:23pm — vastleft
A phrase you won't hear me say often: a must-read at AMERICAblog:
It'sprettydespicable, and gratuitously homophobic. It reads as if it were written by one of George Bush's top political appointees. I cannot state strongly enough how damaging this brief is to us. Obama didn't just argue a technicality about the case, he argued that DOMA is reasonable. That DOMA is constitutional. That DOMA wasn't motivated by any anti-gay animus. He argued why our Supreme Court victories in Roemer and Lawrence shouldn't be interpreted to give us rights in any other area (which hurts us in countless other cases and battles). He argued that DOMA doesn't discriminate against us because it also discriminates about straight unmarried couples (ignoring the fact that they can get married and we can't).
He actually argued that the courts shouldn't consider Loving v. Virginia, the miscegenation case in which the Supreme Court ruled that it is unconstitutional to ban interracial marriages, when looking at gay civil rights cases. He told the court, in essence, that blacks deserve more civil rights than gays, that our civil rights are not on the same level.
And before Obama claims he didn't have a choice, he had a choice. Bush, Reagan and Clinton all filed briefs in court opposing current federal law as being unconstitutional (we'll be posting more about that later). Obama could have done the same. But instead he chose to defend DOMA, denigrate our civil rights, go back on his promises, and contradict his own statements that DOMA was "abhorrent."
I had held out hope that Obama might be a benign sociopath, if such a thing exists. Well, one out of two ain't bad.
(h/t, Arthur via e-mail)
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The Volokh Conspiracies had a nice article on this
Obama DOJ filing, noting that the Obama DOJ says DOMA is not discriminatory at all since it prohibits both gays and straights from having gay sex or same sex marriages And I love this ending to the article - Via this article from Dale Carpenter -
It's like we're getting a third term whether we wanted it or not.
HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
(The Devil's Dictionary.com)
Looks like..
Looks like more than a few were "bamboozled" by the "old okie Doke"..
This must be yet another move in that multi-dimensional chess board Obama is playing..
You know the one..
The Obama supporters will claim that we are blind because we can't see that by Obama not supporting gay rights he is supporting them.
If that fails, well..then gays are racist.
People will eventually see that they were sold a bill of goods by Obama..
Is it too soon to say "I told you so"?
Recovered DU member
Obama throws gays under the bus?
Knock me over with a feather...
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
It's not all bad news in this brief
The Obama Justice Dept. sez:
That was just an added bonus feature!
That is correct but not for the reasons stated.
DOMA was created because Republicans were organizing around a Constitutional Amendment and because anti-gay rights initiatives and bills were doing so well at the time, the concern was that it could possibly pass into law. So the idea was to create a bill that is much easier to undo than to allow an amendment to go forward. The point was to shelter a progressive goal within seemingly hostile legislation to prevent more rigid and permanent legislation from being enacted.
"Someone needs to point out that elephants produce infinitely more shit than donkeys." Brad Mays
Hell hath no fury like a True Believer scorned....
There's plenty of room under the bus, John.
(Psst, it's a bit cooler away from the engine and exhaust pipes. Furthest left....)
OK, snark aside, the language used and points made by Obama's
DOJ is beyond sickening.
This is not how a Democratic president and his DOJ even thinks, much less argues in court.
Even I, who predicted some of what Obama has done, did not imagine he could be this petty, ignorant, and, well, riduculous. Add dangerous to that. Cruel. Uncaring.
Our first Black Republican president?
(Hhhmmm, has a sitting president ever changed parties?)
From the follow-up linked at the top of JA's post
"Where in the law does it say that Obama was required to compare gay marriage to incest?"
In the 11-dimensional chess rulebook, that's where!
Andy O'sullivan is justifying this?
11D corn-holing
(I'm gay and it's not a meant as a slur...we use the term in my little circle to trivialize the "anal sex is an atrocity" line. )
"If we have to have a dictator, who better than Obama"
- progressive blog commentator
What did they think
Obama spent the SC primary with that raving anti-gay gospel singer, what were they thinking?
Whatever they were doing, it's OK
As long as there were no nuptials.
And Refused to Have His Photo Taken With Gavin Newsome
and that was before the presidential race.
Certainly none of the major candidates for President got the gay marriage issue right, but Obama was the most openly hostile towards the gay community. I don't think any of the others embraced known homophobes. And if the McLukin thing in the primaries wasn't enough of a signal, choosing Rick Warren's church for his first "debate" with McCain should've been.
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right -- for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't. " - Eleanor Roosevelt
And, in Warren's venue, saying that God opposed gay marriage
http://www.correntewire.com/im_shocked_s...
Don't get me started on gay marriage or prop 8
By Sept., when it was clear that Obama could kill kittens on TV and still win the election after the economic collapse, resources were *not* diverted to fighting against prop 8. Obama raised another quarter million or so while anti-8 was in the middle of a horrible campaign. Its not Obama's fault, mind you, but liberals spent more effort on Obama within CA than against 8. As late as the end of the summer prop 8 was failing. But it somehow managed to pass. The left's focus on the presidential campaign is the biggest reason, IMO, why prop 8 passed.
That the economic meltdown made it such that obama was gonna win handily, and most resources were still given to him has always been a sore subject with me. This isn't a knock on Obama, but on the left's idiocy.
Not that simple.
Obama continued to encourage all on the left to support his campaign with time and money right up to the end. Obama surrogates went to gay groups to implore them to volunteer and give money to Obama for President.
I went to a awards ceremony/fundraiser for a gay rights organization in Boston after the economic meltdown. Diane Patrick (the wife of Governor Deval Patrick) spoke, and begged us to devote time and money to Obama's campaign. I was disgusted, feeling as you did that since Obama would actually turn out to be an obstacle, not an ally, to the cause of gay rights, that our resources would be better served by focusing on things like Prop 8. But the Obama campaign, through direct mail, email, surrogates, etc. begged us to focus on helping Obama.
Were gay rights organizations stupid and complicit? Sure. But Obama and his campaign share the blame, as they encouraged it.
What do you mean, "up to the end"?
What end?
"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi
Contempt for gays
I have no idea whether it was planned, but I noticed that on the same day Obama gives the bird to gay folk, some of my friends who were big OFB
were posting how great it was that when Obama was born interracial marriage was illegal...and now he's president!
Obama's historically historic historicity of a candidacy was never lost on me, but praising a long past victory for black civil rights on the day Obama sets back gay rights is, to me, insensitive at best.