While Defending It in Court, White House Vows to Repeal Defense of Marriage Act
By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country
Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese has fired off a long letter to President Obama chiding his Justice Department for filing a brief last week in support of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. (The Obama administration says it's obligated to defend laws on the books—even ones with which it disagrees—against legal challenges).
But in a little-noticed move, the White House dispatched its top openly gay official yesterday to reaffirm the president's commitment to a broad gay rights agenda—including repealing the Defense of Marriage Act, which prevents the federal government from recognizing gay marriages and allows states to ignore marriage licenses granted to gay couples in other states. That agenda also includes repealing "don't ask, don't tell" in the military.
Here's what John Berry, Obama's director of the Office of Personnel Management, told the Advocate, a gay publication, on Sunday:
We have four broad legislative goals that we want to accomplish and legislation is one of these things where you've got to move when the opportunity strikes, so I'm going to list them in an order but it's not necessarily going to go one, two, three, four. Obviously, I think the first opportunity is hate crimes and we're hopeful that we can get that passed this week. We're going to try, but if not, we're going to keep at it until we get it passed. The second one [is] ENDA [the Employment Nondiscrimination Act], we want to secure that passage of ENDA, and third is we want to repeal legislatively "don't ask don't tell," and fourth, we want to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.
Now, I'm not going to pledge—and nor is the president—that this is going to be done by some certain date. The pledge and the promise is that, this will be done before the sun sets on this administration—our goal is to have this entire agenda accomplished and enacted into law so that it is secure.
Despite those bold reassurances, the hastily arranged interview between Berry and the Advocate, which happened backstage at Washington's Capital Pride Festival, suggests the Obama team is picking up on growing unease in the LGBT community.
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Tags: religion | marriage | gay rights | Obama administration
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Reader Comments
Matthew Wayne Shepard (December 1, 1976 – October 12, 1998)
If there really were more genuine Christians in this country, Anti-Marriage Equality Amendments and homophobic laws would never appear on the ballot or get passed by legislatures.
Unfortunately, too many (but not all) Christians, for the most part, have become the Lions and We have become the meal.
Martyrs are very often sanctified and made into religious icons. I think the next great religion should be more "human centered" and people should be encouraged to wear jewelry pendants around their necks depicting Matthew Shepard's body crucified to a split-rail fence. It is time to put an actual human face on suffering and not substitute a very real and unacceptable tragedy with the unrealistic remoteness of an ancient myth.
If Jesus actually was a god, he would be so ashamed of the so-called "faithful". But who would want to believe in this magical being when his own followers prove that they do not believe in him by their acts of cruelty, bigotry, and selfish disregard for their fellow human?
The evil which people do, on lonely fields in Wyoming and at the ballot box, would make Christ weep.
(c) Bud Evans
My Blog: rainfish2000(dot)blogspot(dot)com
Love will prevail
In my mind, these arguments are moot. LGBT couples have always been and will always be. No amount of legislation can take that away or change that.
Having the right to marry the person I love is an important one that I wish to have. It would be nice to have the same rights as all other couples and to be recognized as an American citizen, with the same ability to live a happy, full life, as everyone else. It's not fun to have your relationship marginalized or to be told that somehow your love is not worthy of recognition.
However, regardless of what people think, how much they preach, and stamp their feet, and whine, LGBT COUPLES WILL ALWAYS BE. Whether or not you recognize my relationship does not stop me from loving my partner, living with her forever, and having healthy, happy children. Say what you will, I will continue to live my life as I have been and you cannot stop that.
Feel free to get on your pulpit and tell me that my relationship is wrong, that I have some sort of disorder, and that my relationship will somehow damage an entire country, because so far no great nation crumbles when I kiss my partner, nor will it ever.
I would love for you to treat me as a human, to see me for who I am and not whom I love. I would love for you to be a true Christian and treat me as Jesus would, with love and respect, rather than being judgmental and hateful. I would love to be able to marry my partner and commit to a life with her. I would love it if, when my partner has a child, I can be recognized legally as the second parent for the child.
As far as I can see, this is not going to be the case. So for now, I will love my girlfriend. And no one can stop that.
Who are the Divorce leaders in the USA?
Sara, I share your concerns about single parent families, and what it sometimes does to the children. I agree that a high number of marriages end in divorce these days; and that is a marked change from fifty or sixty years ago.
Where we disagree is on the facts about who is getting divorced most frequently. Among religious groups in the U.S. the highest divorce rates are found among the evangelicals. The states with the highest divorce rates are predominately in the so-called Bible Belt, where large percentages of evangelicals live.
These evangelicals, rather than work to strengthen marriages, or to change the laws to make divorce more difficult or marriages more stable, focus on other issues that are less tempting to them personally. They vigorously oppose abortions being legal. They try to deny and/or eliminate all LGBT persons, or at least deny them their equal rights under the Constitution of the U.S., including access to the legal protections of marriage for their lifelong commitments.
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