As a proud (albeit straight) member of that majority, I am glad that majority has come to be. For one rare time, President Obama has done the right thing: his DOJ will not defend DOMA in court.As Republicans and President Obama square off over the Defense of Marriage Act, a new CNN poll shows that a small majority of Americans now support legal recognition for same sex marriages.
In the poll, 51% of adult Americans said they thought same sex marriages should be recognized by law, while 47% said they should not. That's a significant reversal from the same poll two years ago when Americans opposed same sex marriage by a 10-point spread, with 44% in favor and 54% against.
It's the second time in as many months that a pollster has for the first time found majority support for legalizing same sex marriage. In March, a Washington Post/ABC News poll showed that 53% of adults supported legalizing same sex marriage, while 44% opposed it.
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But John Boehner will spend up to $0.5 million in lawyer's fees in his attempt to sustain a law which never should have been passed and signed in the first place, a law which blatantly violates the human rights of a significant segment of America's population.
I hope he spends every penny of that half million... only to see his effort fail utterly and entirely. No one deserves failure more than a powerful public official who attempts to deny American citizens their human rights.
UPDATE: My bad on this. I didn't understand, as Mustang Bobby tells us, that this is TAXPAYERS' MONEY that Boehner and the House are using to defend DOMA, and the half million can be increased by agreement between the parties with the approval of the House. Mustang Bobby puts it this way:
Please read the rest of Bobby's post. I'm still not sure how the House can spend a half million without Senate concurrence and a presidential signature, but a lot of things happen these days that old folks like me with a more traditional understanding of the intent of the Constitution don't comprehend....So let me get this straight...so to speak. According to Mr. Boehner, the country is "broke," but he's willing to spend a half a million dollars to keep discrimination on the books?
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True justice will be having an equality at the Federal level: ie. SS benefits for survivor. Until then all the Hooha is cultural war.
ReplyDeleteYou are correct, of course, mandt... but it seems that now it's a cultural war we are winning. A majority of Americans now want true equality, and as a consequence, acknowledge that marriage is marriage regardless of the sex of the partners. And that number of Americans is growing every year. Mr. Boehner is going to find himself on the wrong side of the trench very soon, if not soon enough to suit me.
ReplyDeleteThe House has its own budget and the money must come out of that. The House also has attorneys, so why hire an outsider?
ReplyDeleteThey may have to fire four staff people to cover the cost, but they don't care when it comes to pandering.
Thanks, Bryan; that makes sense... the mechanism of funding, I mean, not the whole idea of spending much money to defend discrimination.
ReplyDelete"The House also has attorneys, so why hire an outsider?
My father would have responded with just one phrase: "Somebody's brother-in-law." Hey, it's the Republican way!