{"id":7950,"date":"2009-06-13T11:47:30","date_gmt":"2009-06-13T18:47:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=7950"},"modified":"2009-06-13T11:47:30","modified_gmt":"2009-06-13T18:47:30","slug":"obama-doj-to-same-sex-couples-go-fuck-yourselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=7950","title":{"rendered":"Obama DOJ to same-sex couples: Go fuck yourselves"},"content":{"rendered":"

So the Obama Department of Justice decided to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Stonewall — and the 42nd anniversary of Loving vs. Virginia<\/em> — by filing a brief in a same-sex marriage case that repeats a slew of anti-gay canards, and invents a couple of new ones.<\/p>\n

Although some have argued otherwise, I believe (as one of Andrew Sullivan’s readers argues<\/a>) the DOJ has a duty to defend current federal law in all but a few rare cases. I don’t object to them defending the Defense Of Marriage Act. ((Plus, as a matter of tactics, it’s evident that the big LGBT groups want <\/em>this case dismissed, on technical grounds, to clear the ground for a different, stronger lawsuit that’s also in the pipeline. And that’s very likely what will happen.)) But there are a hundred ways they could have done this that wouldn’t have been an insult to everyone who, unlike Barack Obama and his administration, gives a fuck about equal rights.<\/p>\n

As Law Geek<\/a> writes:<\/p>\n

Even if one argues, as I often have, that a government lawyer \u2014 from the Department of Justice to state attorneys general \u2014 must defend even those laws with which one disagrees, such a lawyer needn\u2019t overstate his or her case.\u00a0 The government lawyer defending a statute with which she disagrees needn\u2019t add gratuitous demeaning statements into the legal brief she files.<\/p>\n

Unlike the Obama Administration\u2019s brief filed in the Don\u2019t Ask, Don\u2019t Tell case turned away<\/a> by the Supreme Court this week, last night\u2019s filing<\/a> in Smelt v. United States<\/em> goes too far (pdf<\/a>).\u00a0 It\u2019s offensive, it\u2019s dismissive, it\u2019s demeaning and \u2014 most importantly \u2014 it\u2019s unnecessary.\u00a0 Even if one accepts that DOJ should have filed a brief opposing this case (and the facts do suggest some legitimate questions about standing), the gratuitous language used throughout the filing goes much further than was necessary to make its case.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

See also this post from Americablog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This is really bad. For the next decade, expect to see homophobic talking heads on TV support their most wretched arguments by saying “even the liberal Obama administration says….”\u00a0 Some of the worse, most dehumanizing arguments — like the argument that if gays want equal rights, they should just marry someone of the opposite sex — are now an official position of the Obama DOJ. Worse, they’ve created brand-new, stupid arguments, like the argument that for the Federal government to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages in states where they are legal represents Federal “neutrality.” (Hint: If there is literally no difference between the policy you espouse, and the policy Maggie Galligher prefers, then you are not being “neutral.”)<\/p>\n

Andrew Sullivan writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

I think we can summarize: the brief is (just about) defensible; its full contents are way over the line; someone in the DOJ must have understood that and decided to file it anyway – without even consulting anyone in the gay community. The deployment of arguments that refer to our relationships as equivalent to incest, that demand that we simply marry someone of the opposite sex if we want our civil rights, that implies federal recognition of our civil marriages would mean taxing some Americans to pay for something they abhor: this is simply salt in the wound, and it will be deployed and used by every far right gay-hater in the future, and cited as endorsed by the Obama administration. In the context of Obama’s failure to fulfill any of his pledges to the gay community since he took office, this is terribly deflating.<\/p>\n

We are asked to be patient, and that is fair enough. But we should not be asked to be attacked in this gratuitous manner, shut out of dialogue beforehand, and applaud. We did that for eight years under Clinton. Never again.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

David Link<\/a> has some plausible speculations on how the hell this happened:<\/p>\n

But how could this derision not have been noticed by the President\u2019s men?\u00a0 First, and most obviously, I can only imagine that no lesbian or gay men ever set eyes on this brief.\u00a0 Perhaps I am wrong, but I honestly can\u2019t see how any self-respecting homosexual in 2009 could possibly think this brief was acceptable.\u00a0 While California\u2019s Attorney General Jerry Brown has had to both defend and challenge anti-gay laws, his office has the grace and simple common sense to make sure the briefs are reviewed, if not drafted in the first place, by openly gay attorneys.<\/p>\n

There is something deeper here, though.\u00a0 Obama is comfortable with the clich\u00e9 political rhetoric of gay equality, but this brief shows his understanding doesn\u2019t go a centimeter deeper.\u00a0 Or (most generously) that his Attorney General knows only the words and not the tune.\u00a0 To someone who understands gay equality as little more than a set of slogans and bromides, this brief might not have looked particularly offensive.<\/p>\n

That, at least, is the most generous understanding I am willing to indulge \u2013 that the brief was written and\/or edited by civil servants with an anti-gay inclination, and reviewed by political staff who know no more about gay equality than what they read on the President\u2019s website.<\/p>\n

The ball is now in the President\u2019s court.\u00a0 He owes us an apology \u2013 and not one of words, but one of action.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Box Turtle Bulletin<\/a> has a roundup of blogospheric reactions, and a telling comparison<\/a> to a brief written by an attorney general who really is an advocate for queer rights; Dale Carpenter’s post<\/a> on the quality of the arguments made in Obama’s brief is worth your while; and I’ll close with another quote from Law Dork<\/a>.<\/p>\n

President Obama, if he intends to regain any credibility with the LGBT community this Pride Month, needs to get an answer from A.G. Holder about how such a brief was allowed to be filed under his rule.\u00a0 And he needs to start speaking up about LGBT issues and taking action to make his campaign promises a reality.\u00a0 Obama needs to show that he truly is \u201ca president who supports our cause.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When he was running for president and needed votes and money, Obama made a lot of promises to LBGTQ voters, but he hasn’t fufilled a single one of those promises<\/a>. And now his DOJ is actively working against equality with the same enthusiasm and bad faith arguments we would have expected from the Bush administration.<\/p>\n

Unless there is a very rapid about-face from the Obama administration, I hope that when Joe Biden shows up to a gay DNC fundraiser<\/a> in a couple of weeks, he’s greeted by hundreds of angry queer and queer-allied protestors. I hope he’s booed off the stage; I hope he’s pelted with rotton eggs. I hope that lesbians, gays and allies make it clear to Obama that he won’t get a fucking cent for his re-election until he starts keeping his promises. As of yesterday, however, the time when anyone could give Obama the benefit of the doubt on LGBTQ issues has ended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So the Obama Department of Justice decided to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Stonewall — and the 42nd anniversary of Loving vs. Virginia — by filing a brief in a same-sex marriage case that repeats a slew of anti-gay canards, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,112],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news","category-same-sex-marriage"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7950\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}