Cinderella Congress: Marriage Is Worth a Real Fight
Chuck Donovan /
Perhaps the biggest news out of last week’s reaction to a federal judge striking down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was pundits’ response to the way the Obama Administration “threw the fight.” Echoing some of the most notorious boxing matches in the history of the ring, the Obama-Kagan Justice Department engaged in what even one supporter of same-sex marriage, the distinguished constitutional law scholar Richard Epstein, labeled “almost like collusive litigation,” where the adversaries in a case are secretly on the same side.
The collusion boils down to this: attorneys in the Obama Justice Department, who have sworn that they will “well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office” in which they serve, abandoned not one but all four of the bases for DOMA asserted by Congress. “Congress” in this instance was no small minority cobbled together at the last instant for legislation it scarcely debated, but a bipartisan majority that encompassed 85 percent of both houses of Congress, joined by a Democratic president who had access to comprehensive reports that amplified the many grounds for DOMA. (more…)