When the Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice will end its defense of the unconstitutional Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), Religious Right groups were naturally apoplectic. Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council likened President Obama to a Middle East dictator, the Traditional Values Coalition blasted the “unprecedented power grab,” and Mat Staver of Liberty Counsel said Obama “betrayed the American people.” However, the government will continue to enforce DOMA and the move by the Department of Justice was not without precedent, as the Bush and Clinton administrations both refused to defend laws that they found to be unconstitutional. Even David Barton agrees that the Obama administration has the right to drop its defense of DOMA.
Concerned Women for America’s Mario Diaz believes that the DOMA decision represents a grave turning point in American history as a “tyrannical move” by President Obama, who he accuses of lying about “his putative Christian faith.”
Ironically, Diaz argues that Obama and Holder are “suppress[ing] the rights of the majority of Americans” and don’t think certain people “deserve the same protections other Americans enjoy” by dropping the defense of a law which singles out gays and lesbians for discrimination. In fact, CWA finds the decision so scary that it believes that the future of marriage in America will entail a man leaving his bride at the altar for another man:
Wednesday, February 23, 2011, should be a day all Americans remember. It was the day when President Obama betrayed the majority of Americans by refusing to defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), in fact ordering the Department of Justice (DOJ) to abandon the protection of the federal law preserving marriage as the union between one man and one woman.
This decision – just like his pretended support for traditional marriage during the presidential campaign – was purely political for the President whose radical liberalism grows starker by the day. Obama is counting on the powerful homosexual lobby to come out in full force for him, but Americans must not forget this tyrannical move by the president. Even as we focus on issues of the economy, jobs, and spending, we must remember that a morally bankrupt nation can never flourish. All the tax cuts in the world can never repair a nation’s broken spirit.
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So, just like any other despot, Obama decided unilaterally to make the decision for all of us ignorant Americans who support DOMA, and we should be grateful.
Shame on him. And shame on us if we just stand by silently and take it. We should not! We must speak out.
Truthfully, we have been too silent for far too long. President Obama and Mr. Holder have been actively working against DOMA and, therefore, against all Americans ever since they took office. Even on the cases where they decided to “defend” DOMA, they were actually undermining its reasoning by abandoning the most effective arguments.
DOJ’s mission statement says it is “...to ensure fair and impartial administration of justice for all Americans.” But President Obama and the attorney general have made a mockery of impartiality. They have chosen to side with an extreme, liberal minority and chose to suppress the rights of the majority of Americans.
Simply put, if you support DOMA, this president and his administration view you as the enemy who does not deserve the same protections other Americans enjoy. We are on our own.