The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was a contrivance that politicians had to put into the law if they wanted to prevent the federal rights that would obviously and fairly be granted to same-sex couples once marriage equality became a reality in America. And now, those of us who are seeking DOMA’s overdue demise are asking the courts to determine if this legislative contrivance can pass a constitutional smell test, as we believe the 1996 nam is as flawed as it is artificial.
But leave it to the National Organization For Marriage‘s chairman to ignore that reality so as to instead act like it’s the pro-equality side that is “inventing” something here. This from The New York Times:
Maggie Gallagher, the chairwoman of the National Organization for Marriage, a group that opposes same-sex marriage, said court challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act showed that gay rights advocates “continue to push a primarily court-based strategy of, in our view, inventing rights that neither the founders nor the majority of Americans can recognize in our Constitution.” [NYT]
So wait, again: Politicians made a mid-90s choice wholly based on hostility for LGBT equality, and yet it’s those who are seeking to restore the constitution to its original intent (or at least to recognize its 142-year-old 14th Amendment) who are supposedly going against the founder’s intent?!? And the rights-thwarting mob rule of a “majority of Americans” is presented as a constitutional principle?! Yea, mmhmm, right, Mags.
Not to mention: Maggie didn’t even really like DOMA all that much back when it came into existence. She found it too timid:
[SOURCE]
Because Maggie wanted and wants more. She wants a complete ban — an even more contrived amendment that would strike right at the heart of the constitution, turning it, for the first time in history, into a weapon against certain kinds of tax-paying citizens. Maggie wants an invention of the far-right think tanks that have given her a career.
So the NOM chair can go ahead and paint us as mad scientists in an anti-constitutional lab all she wants. The patently obvious fact is that its her own decades of work twisting and molding the political landscape so that it turns against the benign, easy, should-be-non-controversial concept of folding ALL Americans into the fabric that is the truly inorganic factor at play here. Peace would need to battle plan, if not for the far-right’s carefully orchestrated “culture war”!!
