The Republican Lie About DOMA

Republicans, dissatisfied with having passed one unconstitutional law on marriage, are now trying to pass another to defend it.

The Republicans have been lying about DOMA, the federal law that bans marriage for same-sex couples, ever since President Obama announced he would no longer defend the unconstitutional law in court. Case in point, this blatant lie, an op-ed in The Hill, titled “The president cannot declare a law unconstitutional,” penned by Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN), that is devoid of facts.

Burton, a 2006 award recipient from the now-certified hate group Family Research Council, writes, “President Obama made an unprecedented decision to declare a Federal law unconstitutional and thereby abdicate his responsibility to uphold and defend that law,” adding it is “the President’s constitutional duty to execute that law up to and including defending that law before the courts.”

False.

Presidents have a duty to enforce, but not to defend laws they believe to be unconstitutional in court.

The fact is, many other presidents, including Eisenhower, Kennedy, Truman, Ford, Clinton, Bush 41, Bush 43, and yes, even Reagan, have refused to defend laws they believed unconstitutional. Add to that the fact that Obama has made clear he will enforce DOMA until it is repealed, Obama did not “abdicate his responsibility to uphold and defend that law.”

Burton claims to see, “the President’s apparent flip-flop on his position that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman…”

Sadly, not yet. Since at least 1996, Obama has always said he believed DOMA was unconstitutional. Burton is intentionally albeit falsely equating, as Huckabee and Palin are trying to do, the president’s position on marriage with his position on DOMA. It’s a typical GOP trick these days, and typical of the Republican zero-sum mentality.

Burton falsely calls Obama’s decision to not defend DOMA, “the unconstitutional action the President took to impose his new vision of marriage on the American people.” Language straight out of Maggie Gallagher’s talking points, no doubt.

Burton — a Vince Foster conspiracy-theorist who has no problem mixing business with pleasure, putting family on his payroll, and spamming constituents while forcing them to pay for it — says, “the truth is that marriage has always, since the foundation of this nation, been defined as that special union between one man and one woman. Hell, even Maggie Gallagher says that’s false! (See: Mormons.)

He adds, “most Americans support the traditional definition of marriage.” Well, Congressman, no, no longer true.

In August of 2010, an AP/Roper poll showed that a majority of Americans support marriage equality, and believe the government should not make any distinction between same-sex and opposite-sex couples when determining government benefits.

Additionally, a CNN poll also in August 2010 showed that 52% of Americans think marriage equality is a constitutional right.

And let’s remember that an August 2010 Pew study showed that same-sex marriage is the least-important issue to voters.

But what really is beyond the pale is the Republicans’ “Marriage Protection Act of 2011,” which Rep. Burton has reintroduced into the House last week. It  — unconstitutionally — removes the right of citizens to petition their government through the federal courts.

Burton, co-sponsor of Rep. Steve King’s “Birthright Citizenship Act of 2011,” and introduced a bill to spend money on contraception for horses (but is 100% pro-life,) is not fond of civil rights apparently.

Burton says, “I, along with a number of my colleagues, reintroduced the “Marriage Protection Act of 2011.” This bill simply states that no courts created by an Act of Congress – meaning Federal courts – will have jurisdiction to hear cases regarding same-sex marriage. Additionally, the Supreme Court will not have appellate jurisdiction to hear these cases. In short, the bill makes same-sex marriage an issue to be determined by the people through their state legislatures or via referendum, not by Federal judges.”

Republicans like Rep. Burton are hard at work, not creating jobs, but trying to remove constitutional protections from good and decent Americans.