Obama Shirks His Executive Duty to Enforce DOMA

In a decision described as "shocking" and "breathtaking," the Obama administration announced this afternoon that the Justice Department will no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

The highly unusual move hands gay rights advocates a major victory they have worked years to secure--but is also certain to provoke intense controversy and trigger a heated political battle with Congressional Republicans, who support the law and have refused to repeal it.

The Justice Department is tasked with defending laws passed by Congress--even those laws the sitting President may not like or have supported. Only a few times in history has a President decided his Justice Department will not defend an existing federal law. In those rare circumstances, the House of Representatives can step in and have its lawyers defend the law in court.

President Obama decided the Justice Department no longer would defend DOMA after concluding the law was unconstitutional, administration officials said. Attorney General Eric Holder notified House Speaker John Boehner of the President's decision in a letter today, explaining that the administration believed the law violated equal protection principles, because it treats gays and lesbians differently than heterosexual couples. The government, he said, has no compelling reason for doing that.

"This is a rare case where the proper course is to forgo the defense of this statute," Holder said in the letter.

Ironically, while some may can make hypothetical arguments about whether or not DOMA is constitutional, no one is debating that it is unconstitutional for a President to pick and choose which laws he intents to enforce. It is his express constitutional duty as the head of the executive branch to enforce ALL the laws. That is job he swore to do with his oath of office.

Obama's new decision represents an about-face for the administration, which for two years had defended the statute against legal challenges by same-sex married couples. Obama himself said he was opposed to gay marriage when he was campaigning, although many critics said he was saying that to fool voters into thinking he was a moderate.

Senator Scott Brown stated the obvious reaction to Obama's announcement to ignore the lawl: "We can't have presidents deciding what laws are constitutional and what laws are not. That is a function of the judicial branch, not the executive.''

Maggie Gallagher, chairman of the National Organization of Marriage, called the decision a "truly shocking extra-constitutional power grab" and a "defection of duty" by the President. But she also said the administration had not been forcefully defending the law in court for some time.

"The good news is this now clears the way for the House to intervene and to get lawyers in the court room who actually want to defend the law, and not please their powerful political special interests," Gallagher said.

DOMA was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in 1996, and has withstood court challenges--all of which makes Obama's decision even more extraordinary. He is now opening defying the laws in which he swore to uphold, and the job he is paid to do. What is really amazing, however, is so little Media outrage for publicly announcing he will not enforce certain laws, based on his own opinion. If President Bush, for example, had refused to defend Abortion clinics because he disagreed with abortions, the media would have called for his impeachment. It's a stunning revelation about how the administration treats the law, and how the media treats the administration. See Chick's SIN CITY.