As they did with DOMA, almost one year ago to the day, the Obama administration has now decided it will no longer defend in court a law that bans same-sex couples from receiving military and veterans benefits, calling it a violation of the Fifth Amendment. Attorney General Eric Holder notified Congress today, according to a report in TPM:
“The legislative record of these provisions contains no rationale for providing veterans’ benefits to opposite-sex couples of veterans but not to legally married same-sex spouses of veterans,†Holder wrote. “Neither the Department of Defense nor the Department of Veterans Affairs identified any justifications for that distinction that would warrant treating these provisions differently from Section 3 of DOMA.â€
Obama and Holder were subjected to great vitriol from opponents on the right when they declared DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act, unconstitutional. DOMA bans same-sex married couples from receiving over 1100 benefits that are regularly afforded to heterosexually-married couples.
At the time, the right claimed Obama had abdicated his oath of office for refusing to defend DOMA in court, a totally false accusation that anyone who has read the presidential oath of office would be unable to make in honesty.
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