The House's four openly gay
representatives – Barney Frank of Massachusetts, Jared Polis of
Colorado, Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin and David Cicilline of Rhode
Island – have joined with Jerrold Nadler of New York and John
Conyers of Michigan to condemn House
Speaker John Boehner's decision to defend the Defense of Marriage Act
(DOMA).
On Wednesday, a five-member panel
appointed by Boehner voted 3-2 along party lines to instruct the
House's nonpartisan Office of the General Counsel to defend the 1996
law, now that President Barack Obama won't.
Obama
decided that his administration would no longer defend the law
that bans federal agencies from recognizing the legal marriages of
gay and lesbian couples and allows states to ignore such marriages
from out of state. The president said he believes parts of the law
are unconstitutional.
Nadler, who recently announced he would
reintroduce his 2009 bill to repeal the law, and the five other
lawmakers denounced the decision as partisan politics.
“This 3-2 vote, carried over the
vigorous objection of House Democratic Leaders and structured to
avoid a vote of the House as a whole, is partisanship at its worst,”
the lawmakers said in a statement.
The lawmakers added that they supported
the president in his decision to no longer defend the Clinton-era
law.
“The President correctly concluded
that the Defense of Marriage Act cannot and should not be defended in
court. It has been 15 years since Congress enacted DOMA, and the
myths and stereotypes used to support its enactment have been
shattered. Married gay and lesbian couples pay taxes, serve their
communities, struggle to balance work and family, raise children and
care for aging parents. Their contributions and needs are no
different than anyone else’s. The majority of Americans understand
this and now favor extending the time-honored tradition of marriage
to loving and committed gay and lesbian couples. There is no
legitimate reason for the federal government to continue denying
married gay and lesbian couples the legal security, rights and
responsibilities that recognition of their marriages would provide.”
“Rather than seeking to defend this
law in court, House Republican Leaders should work with us to repeal
DOMA. This action debunks House Republican Leadership’s claim of
being the so-called guarantor of states’ rights. House Republican
Leaders seem only to favor states’ rights when it suits them
ideologically. Rather than recognizing every states’ married
couples equally, Section 3 of DOMA refuses to recognize the marriages
of gay and lesbian couples from five states and the District of
Columbia. Those states have a clear interest in ensuring that all of
their married couples receive the same recognition under federal law.
Certainly, Republican Leadership is not acting in these states’
interests.”