Democratic leaders are protesting “repeated, secret increases” in the amount paid to outside counsel by the House majority in defense of the Defense of Marriage Act.
In a letter to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) decried their discovery earlier this week that the GOP increased the DOMA contract by $3 million at the start of the 113th Congress.
“This is not the first time that House Republicans have made a unilateral decision to raise the ceiling on expenditures for this wasteful litigation that supports a discriminatory statute, without any public discussion or advance notice to Democratic members of the BLAG, Members of the House, or the public. This clandestine commitment of taxpayer funds is highly irregular and objectionable, and it must end now,” Pelosi and Hoyer wrote.
In 2011, President Obama told the Justice Department to stop defending the 1996 law that prohibits federal recognition of same-sex marriage. Republicans authorized $2.75 million to hire DOMA lawyers, and upped that to $3 million on Jan. 4.
“From the start, the Republican-led campaign to defend DOMA has been a practice in futility and a waste of Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars. The Republican-appointed, taxpayer-funded legal team has lost in every case,” Pelosi and Hoyer wrote. “Courts across the nation have stood on the side of justice and equality for all Americans. DOMA is on its way into the dustbin of history.”
They told Boehner it would be bad enough if Republicans were losing in court yet accepting the result, but “it is the height of hypocrisy for House Republicans to waste public funds in one breath then claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility in the next.”
“With Republicans willing to take our economy and our country to the brink of default in the name of deficit reduction, there is simply no excuse for any Member of Congress to commit taxpayer dollars to an unnecessary – and futile – legal battle,” Pelosi and Hoyer continued.
“Until Republicans decide to abandon this effort once and for all, we ask you to make your legal plans clear; to make public every contract signed with outside counsel in this case in a timely manner; to declare the total cost of this case to the taxpayers; and to abide by the highest standards of transparency and accountability.”
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a challenge to DOMA at the end of March. The case, United States v. Windsor, centers on a case in which two New York lesbians legally married in Canada, then one had to pay taxes on the inheritance when her partner died.
“We believe it is only a matter of time before this offensive law is a discarded relic of a bygone era,” added Pelosi and Hoyer.
“We believe it is only a matter of time before this offensive law is a discarded relic of a bygone era…”
How odd. I’ve been saying the same about Affirmative Action for some time now.
How much did Nancy’s airplane upgrade cost when she was Speaker?
Marriage is not a natural right, as it depends upon governments or society for its existence, and thus marriage, as an institution, does not exist in a state of nature (whereas relationships do). Therefore, being a creature of government or society, government or society has a right to define marriage, in the same way they do not have the right to define the right to a relationship.
Plantiffs have never, to my knowledge, been denied the right of marriage. They simply have choosen never to avail themselves of it. Bear with me. Not to trivialize it, but if government says it will offer to all, for public purchase, chocolate ice cream, but I come in demanding vanilla, I have not been denied a great right when they government says “no”, because, if nothing else, it didn’t have to offer anything at all. It wasn’t offering “ice cream, any flavor”, but “chocolate ice cream”. Government offers certain things for the public good. This does not mean other things may not be for the public good–just that the people, via their representatives in government, have a right to choose their public good policies. If the government opens a bike trail, I have not been discriminated against because I wished a skate park, because I do not ride bikes. Have I been left out? Certainly. But not discriminated against.
What plantiffs wish is a redefinition of the concept of “marriage”, an expansion beyond the traditional. This may or may not be a public good–I am neutral, especially as I am expected by plaintiffs to develop my own reasons to support them, which I find offensive, an assumption of automatic saintliness on their part–but it does seem that since, in America, the people are sovereign, plantiffs need to make their plea to the people, and not the courts. This is a democracy, not an autocracy. The people have a right to decide these things. If plantiffs have a good argument, they will eventually prevail. If they do not, then even less reason for the Court to act. We are facing great changes in our times. If we in America use the democratic process to enact the changes, then at the end of the day the opposition will fade away and robust arguments for the rest of the world to heed will be made, out of necessity to convince or isolate the opposition. Never forget that while the Anti-Federalists lost the Ratification debates because they ultimately had the weaker argument, their opposition gave us the Bill of Rights. Also never forget that the seemngly rapid advances in black equality if the 1960s were actually merely the culmination of five hundred years of thought on the rights of man. I think if gay marriage has to wait a few years or decades so that the idea of a representative democracy can be kept, no great disgrace will accrue. If instead we use the courts and the methods of rule by fiat, the fault line tension will never go away, until the plates slip, because a democratic people will have been dictated to, not given their say. And then…what may come will be deserved, well deserved, because it is, at the end of the day, the people’s Republic, and not Plato’s, and even if those who would be the Guardians would forget that, the people would not, and should not.
You are correct that same-sex marriage is a demand for the creation of a new kind of marriage, and the instant incorporation of this new creation within the traditional version of marriage on a co-equal basis.
Three things are advanced on behalf of this creation and incorporation: analogy, denigration, and obfuscation.
Analogy: The same-sex marriage advocates argue that they are in the same position as the mixed-race couples who were disadvantaged by laws against miscegenation. This is false; mixed-race couples who faced prosecution under the anti-miscegenation laws had entered into traditional marriages which were outlawed on the basis of the extraneous detail of race. Without the law making race an invalidating factor, the marriage would have been valid.
Denigration: The same-sex marriage advocates often argue, “What are heterosexuals protecting? Marriage is in a terrible state!” Leaving aside for the moment the curious question of why, if marriage is so undesirable, they are advocating mightily to partake of it, the proper response is that this is irrelevant. Many marriages fail, for any number of reasons, but it is a mistake to argue against the institution on the basis of particular failures, be they a divorce after many years or some celebrity coupling of brief duration. In any event, it is a poor argument to suggest that the institution, if it is indeed “in trouble,” will be strengthened by the additional burden of a newly-invented form.
Obfuscation: The movement currently demanding “marriage equality” was founded with the frequently-vocalized objective of destroying marriage, and heterosexuality. We are told by many people that that was “a long time ago”—yet we are expected to give a respectful ear to mouthings about Jim Crow racism and about slavery by people who have never experienced either. The gay-rights movement never abandoned or repudiated its anti-marriage, anti-heterosexuality ideology; indeed, the latter has become the basis of entire courses of study institutionalized in places of higher education. Why, then, should anyone believe that the movement has abandoned its objective of destroying marriage? If it did so, it should be a simple matter for the advocates to document where, when and how this occurred. Given that the movement has shown itself to be unremittingly hostile to First Amendment protections of free speech and free exercise of religion, targeting any disagreement or dissent as “hate speech” and necessitating that California pass a law which the First Amendment alone should render superfluous, to “guarantee” that marital officiants who elect not to perform same-sex marriages will not face liability, it would behoove the movement to make a little effort towards reassuring those to whom it is issuing demands.
– now turns on Bill Clinton.