skippy the bush kangaroo: calm the frig down, john...

Friday, June 12, 2009

calm the frig down, john...

okay, let's run through this slowly...

first, obama's department of justice announces it will move to dismiss a claim that the defense of marriage act is unconstitutional. for good measure (and in that extensively detailed and predictably long-winded fashion characteristic of legal folks and institutions all over this great land), it submits a 44-page memo defending its case.

then, john aravosis gets a look at said memo, and proceeds to write one of the most hysterical posts i've ever read -- and by hysterical, i don't mean falling down funny, i mean somebody put the wrong kind of mushroom in john's salad today, or something. it has to be read in its entirety to be believed -- or disbelieved, depending on your own view. but here's one small part of it:

praises doma as "cautiously limited"
doma reflects a cautiously limited response to society's still-evolving understanding of the institution of marriage.

sounds to me like obama just came out against the loving v. va case that ensured that people like his parents could marry
on the merits, plaintiffs' claims that doma violates the full faith and credit clause and their "right to travel" both fail as a matter of law. in allowing each state to withhold its recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions, congress was merely confirming longstanding conflict-of-laws principles in a valid exercise of its express power to settle such questions under the full faith and credit clause. that clause ensures that each state retains the authority to decline to apply another state's law when it conflicts with its own public policies. doma is fully consistent with that constitutional principle, as it permits states to experiment with and maintain the exclusivity of their own legitimate public policies — such as whether that state chooses to recognize or reject same-sex marriages.

oh, please. loving v. virginia was decades ago. interracial marriage was commonly, and incorrectly, held to be fundamentally wrong back then. but time went by, and people's consciousness about the issue slowly became more aware and informed. the year we're in now is 2009 -- interracial marriages are so common these days, no one but members of the vanishing homo neanderthalensis species gives it a second thought.

gay marriage is a whole other story. gay rights groups are still going through that process of raising people's consciousness about this to the point where it'll become just another foregone conclusion. the department of justice hasn't done anything wrong that i can see. granted, i never went to law school, and i don't even know the first thing about being a lawyer. but i do know that the purpose of the doj is not to make the law, but to uphold it, and to defend the united states of america in accordance with the law.

like it or not, john, gay marriage simply is not a law the doj is obliged to uphold at this time. the lawmakers are on capitol hill -- you want to see the law changed in favor of gay marriage, stop hollering about obama and start calling your creatures of congress. yes, obama called doma an abomination while he was on the campaign trail. that's what politicians do. but obama is also a student and professor of constitutional law. i don't like what he said any more than you do. i just can't argue with it.

and one other thing, from one gay guy to another: stop acting like a faggot. that never gets us anywhere...

Labels: gay/lesbian, it is what it is, politics