Obama and DOMA: Will the President Do the Right Thing?

Published on Saturday, July 10, 2010 by The Nation

Obama and DOMA: Will the President Do the Right Thing?

by John Nichols

Political divisions of the United States Defense of Marriage Act was always a false construct.

Enacted in the midst of the 1996 election season -- when conservative forces were raising a ruckus about the "threat" posed by same-sex marriage -- it was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in 1996 in an attempt to turn the volumn down on the issue by formally, if coherently, defining marriage as enterprise that could only be entered into by a man and a woman.

The law was blatantly discriminatory, and as a candidate the presidency, Barack Obama described it as "abhorrent" and "an unnecessary imposition on what had been the traditional rules governing marriage and how states interact on the issues of marriage."

Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does," said candidate Obama in a statement that succinctly summed up the reasons for overturning the law.

Now, in response to a lawsuit brought by the group Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders against the Obama administration's Office of Personnel Management on behalf of eight married gay couples and three surviving spouses who were denied federal spousal rights and benefits because of DOMA, a federal judge has recognized the logic of those arguments.

The question is whether the president and his Justice Department will operate along the lines voters presumed it would when they elected Obama as a supporter of LGBT rights.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/07/10-5