House Republicans have desperately been trying to defend the Defense of Marriage Act. Through the wasteful use of taxpayer money, Republicans have sought to keep the anti-gay law from being struck down in court after court. But so far, the conservative-led effort is failing and yet another federal judge has struck down the discriminatory policy.
District Judge Vanessa L. Bryant overturned the policy in Pedersen v. Office of Personnel Management, ruling that the law violates equal protection as found in the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.
Bryant, a Second Circuit judge appointed by George W. Bush, stated in her ruling that homosexuals have long endured discrimination in this country and that Republicans are wrong when they claim that LGBT people haven’t been discriminated in American history:
“The fact that the concept of homosexuality as a distinct category or class wasn’t fully recognized until the late nineteenth century is not indicative of an absence of a long history of discrimination in light of the long standing proscriptions on homosexual conduct – conduct that is central if not tantamount in some sense to identity. Moreover, the pervasiveness of the “closet” in which homosexuals purposefully hid their sexualities could very well explain why it was only in the late nineteenth century that conceptions of homosexual identity emerged as gay Americans moved into cities and began tentatively stepping out of the closet. In sum, the evidence in the record detailing the long history of anti-gay discrimination which evolved from conduct-based proscriptions to status or identity-based proscriptions perpetrated by federal, state and local governments as well as private parties amply demonstrates that homosexuals have suffered a long history of invidious discrimination. Moreover this conclusion is consistent with the majority of cases which have meaningfully considered the question and likewise held that homosexuals as a class have experienced a long history of discrimination.”
The fight to repeal DOMA is poised to reach the Supreme Court at some point in the very near future. Multiple rulings against DOMA are being challenged by conservatives who are desperate to keep their hateful bigotry legal, and they’re hoping the conservative leaning Supreme Court will side with them. The problem for these conservatives is that both Republicans and Democrats have fought to repeal DOMA together. Leading the way are Ted Olson and David Boies, the two lawyers who faced each other in Bush v. Gore, the controversial Supreme Court decision that handed George W. Bush the 2000 Election.
So not only are arguments against DOMA piling up, people of either party affiliation are joining forces to overturn the 1996 law. That spells bad news for anti-gay conservatives who think their twisted view of the Bible is more important than the principles of the Constitution.
Lois Lerner, IRS Official, On Leave Of Absence: Reports
Women do not belong in Politics
- nanaofsix531
on Aug. 2, 2012 at 11:13 AM