President Obama is finally doing the right thing on the Defense of Marriage Act, at least in part
After two-plus years of allowing his administration to defend the indefensible anti-civil rights law, he has ordered it to back away from its constitutional defense of Section 3 of the statute, “which limits the definition of marriage to opposite-sex partners, precludes spouses in same-sex marriages from receiving certain federal benefits to which spouses in traditional marriages are entitled.”
While the president and Attorney General Eric Holder, who announced the decision, did not go so far as to call for DOMA’s full repeal or say that the administration would remove itself from all challenges,
Holder noted that Obama had “concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny.”
It is an issue of discrimination for the administration, which means that the debate has been altered. The administration very specifically backed away from conservative attempts to define this as a debate about traditional marriage. I wish he would have gone farther — to declare without reservation that DOMA should be repealed — but Obama’s decision is an important step forward for gay rights.
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Hank Kalet 