The gay marriage group Stop
8 has called the National Organization for Marriage's (NOM)
attack ad against President Barack Obama's decision to no longer
defend the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) 'gibberish.'
The president recently announced he
would no longer defend the Clinton-era law because he believes
portions of the law that bans federal recognition of the legal
marriages of gay and lesbian couples to be unconstitutional.
In a one-minute-twenty-three-second
video released last week, NOM accuses the president of turning his
back on marriage.
“DOMA was passed by an overwhelming
bipartisan majority and signed into law by President Clinton, but
that didn't seem to matter to Obama,” the male announcer says in
the ad. “Instead of doing his job to uphold the law he's dumping
it behind our backs.”
In breaking down the video, Stop 8
notes that many of the law's supporters have dumped the law, but
Obama continues to enforce it.
“That was true, but that was a long
time ago,” the group says in its video response. “And that
bipartisan majority is long gone.”
“In fact, the guy who wrote it,
Republican Bob Barr, later apologized for it. And now he's one of
the guys trying to get it repealed.”
“You want to bring up Clinton? OK.
He also says that DOMA was a mistake and needs to be repealed. And
he supports marriage equality.”
“So, yeah, Clinton.”
The group goes on to call the
accusation that Obama dumped DOMA behind our backs “gibberish,”
pointing out that the law remains in effect and the president is
simply no longer defending it in court. (The video is embedded in
the right panel of this page.)