Obama: Defense of Marriage Act 'Discriminatory'

2 years ago

0 Comments Say Something »

Text Size

Woman Up Editor

In the unlikely platform of a brief to defend the federal government, President Obama added a personal statement to a Justice Department filing Monday, calling the law it was defending unfair.

The case, Smelt v. United States, before the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, brought by a married, same-sex California couple, asks the federal government to treat them equally with respect to federal protections and benefits which have been denied under the 13-year-old Defense of Marriage Act. Despite the necessity to defend the federal statute as it currently stands on the books, Obama wrote: "My administration believes that the act is discriminatory and should be repealed by Congress. I have long held that DOMA prevents (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual) couples from being granted equal rights and benefits." The complete filing is available here.

Filed Under: Obama Administration, Woman Up

Tagged: defense of marriage, DefenseOfMarriage, same sex marriage, SameSexMarriage, Smelt v United States, SmeltVUnitedStates

Our New Approach to Comments

In an effort to encourage the same level of civil dialogue among Politics Daily’s readers that we expect of our writers – a “civilogue,” to use the term coined by PD’s Jeffrey Weiss – we are requiring commenters to use their AOL or AIM screen names to submit a comment, and we are reading all comments before publishing them. Personal attacks (on writers, other readers, Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush, or anyone at all) and comments that are not productive additions to the conversation will not be published, period, to make room for a discussion among those with ideas to kick around. Please read our Help and Feedback section for more info.