DOMA is Not Neutral, Mr. President

Here’s what then-Senator Barak Obama said about DOMA in a 2004 letter to a Chicago paper:

When Members of Congress passed DOMA, they were not interested in strengthening family values or protecting civil liberties. They were only interested in perpetuating division and affirming a wedge issue. … Despite my own feelings about an abhorrent law, the realities of modern politics persist. While the repeal of DOMA is essential, the unfortunate truth is that it is unlikely with Mr. Bush in the White House and Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress.

So why, or why does the administration’s brief in  Smelt v. U.S. (blogged by Ann here).  The brief defends the constitutionality of DOMA on the grounds that the statute is:

…a cautious policy of federal neutrality towards a new form of marriage. DOMA maintains federal policies that have long sought to promote the traditional and uniformly-recognized form of marriage, recognizes the right of each State to expand the traditional definition if it so chooses, but declines to obligate federal taxpayers in other States to subsidize a form of marriage that their own states do not recognize.

DOMA isn’t neutral.  DOMA takes a clear side in the marriage debate.  Now in supporting DOMA, President Obama has taken a side — the side he previously called “abhorrent.”

If you want to tell the White House what you think, there’s an easy email form here.  (H/T Tony Varona) Make your views known to the supposedly “most open and accessible administration in American history.”  

-Bridget Crawford