Please, somebody tell me this is a huge pack of evil lies:
http://www.americablog.com/2009/06/obama-justice-department-defends-doma.html
It looks to me like he’s citing case law with regards to Full Faith and Credit exceptions, not invoking a slippery slope objection.
He’s not saying that people will marry their nieces- he’s saying that the several states cannot be required to recognize marriages performed elsewhere, when those marriages performed elsewhere violate that state’s policy.
He then cited case law of situations where the same situation had occurred.
How in the world did you get “Obama invokes incest and marrying children in defense of DOMA?”
He’s engaging in a defense of the defense of marriage? How meta…
After reading the whole thing, I now think it’s clear that the Obama administration is defending DOMA as a Constitutional exception to the Full Faith and Credit clause, not arguing against same-sex marriage per se. DOMA is not a ban on same-sex marriage, it just says that states don’t have to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.
I don’t like DOMA, it annoys me that the Obama administration is defending it, and I don’t know why Obama is bothering, but the linked article is mischaracterizing this brief as an invocation of incest/man-on-dog type slippery slope arguments against SSM, when it’s really just citing precedents for FF&C exceptions.
Yeah, my apologies, folks. Pardon me for posting tripe. I ought to know better than to post until I’ve thoroughly read the link. I went off half-cocked.
In your defense, the blog writer himself made those claims from the title and through the article.
Further, it’s the job of the Department of Justice to defend the constitutionality of validly passed laws* against challenges, unless directly ordered to do otherwise by the Attorney General, presumably in consultation with the President. Don’t construe this as necessarily political support of the Obama Administration for DOMA, merely that they have chosen not to expend political capital on its overthrow. The attorneys arguing this may not actually support DOMA, and may be in the same position of a defense attorney representing a probably-guilty client – their job is to make the best case they can for the posirion they hold.
- By ‘validly passed’ I mean that it conformed to the legal requirements for enactment, a majority in each house and the President’s signature, not that it was necessarily constitutional, moral, or whatever. The Fugitive Slave Laws were validly passed; that doesn’t mean they were right.
Following up on Polycarp’s point, one thing Obama campaigned on was the belief that we are a nation of laws, not of men, in the sense that we cannot ignore or contravene laws merely because we disagree with them – something the previous administration did regularly with those signing statements, for example. It is the duty of the Department of Justice to support all duly passed laws unless and until they are legislatively revoked or overturned by an appellate court of proper jurisdiction.
Do we really want a White House that feels it’s okay to tell the DOJ what laws it should and should not uphold? Do we really want a DOJ that knuckles under to White House marching orders? Didn’t we have enough of that under Bush?
The whole thing’s very discouraging. 
Here’s a joint press release from the ACLU, the Human Rights Campaign, Lambda Legal and others, criticizing the manner in which DOJ argued its position.
Not once you learn about duty of zeal, it’s not.
Personally, I find DOMA distasteful. I assume some of those working on this did as well. However, that doesn’t really enter into it.
The idea behind a vigorous debate isn’t that one side capitulates to the other based on appeals to emotion and what’s right. The idea is that both sides are fully explored.
I think a line should be drawn at arguments that are specious or intellectually dishonest. From my previous cite:
IANAL, but it seems to me it’s one thing to take the strongest points of your case and it’s another to throw in everything and the kitchen sink, hoping something will stick. You can be a competent–even zealous–advocate and not necessarily resort to the latter.
The line you quoted was from ArchiveGuy, not me.
The crux of the matter is that while the DOJ has to do its job, there are different ways to go about it.
As this blog points out:
I am deeply disappointed in the Obama administration for allowing this brief to go out. It seems they speak with forked tongues on this issue.
In some ways, that could apply to defense attorneys. It’s a valid (though I would personally disagree) position, but I’d be curious if there’s someone who thinks the DOJ should pull some of its punches but a defense attorney shouldn’t.
I’m in a slightly awkward position of wholeheartedly supporting marriage, while simultaneously thinking that DOMA is a good law. Marriage is a controversial issue, one far from a national consensus. To use the FF clause to bypass the federal experiment is somewhat antithetical to the spirit of the clause.
The truth is that the Obama administration has shown that LGBT causes are not a priority and it is not surprising that this brief is seen as a slap in the face.
Whoops.
Nope.
States rights are more important. More things should be decided at the state level.
States do not have rights, any more than polynomials do. States hve powers.
And individual rights should not be at the disposal of states’ powers, If you wish to advocate that gay people have no right to marry (each other. as opposed to fake straight marriages), I’ll listen – but will be difficult to convince. IMO there is a right to marry, which may be regulated for the common good (i.e., no 12-year-olds marrying, no fraudulent bigamous marriages, etc.), where there is a legitimate government purpose.