You are here: Home » Featured » Press Secretary Gibbs Unsure Of Obama’s Feelings About DOMA Constitutionality

Press Secretary Gibbs Unsure Of Obama’s Feelings About DOMA Constitutionality

07/29/10-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
What is President Barack Obama’s stance on the Defense of Marriage Act? To be honest, no one is really sure, and that includes White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs. Gibbs told The Advocate “I have not heard the President intone what he believes the constitutionality of the law is. I know that he believes the law should be changed.” President Obama is a Constitutional scholar, and it would seem odd for him to feel that DOMA is at least, in part, constitutional since the portion of the law which prevents one state from recognizing a marriage contract entered into in another state.

The following is the entire exchange between the Advocate reporter and Secretary Gibbs:

The Advocate: A growing number of people have started to call on the administration not to defend what the president refers to as the “so-called” Defense of Marriage Act — including Steve Hildebrand last week and the Human Rights Campaign, which is the largest LGBT community lobby and, quite frankly, it’s usually fairly favorable toward the administration, so it was a turnaround for them to call on the administration not to defend that law.

The president has called DOMA discriminatory. Does the president believe that a discriminatory law is constitutional?

Robert Gibbs: I don’t … the president hasn’t to the best of my … I have not heard the president intone what he believes the constitutionality of the law is. I know that he believes the law should be changed.

Legal decisions around next steps in that case, I believe, will be made at the Justice Department and I would point you over there to them.

Again, the president believes, in this case, and the president believes in the case of “don’t ask, don’t tell” that those are laws that he has believed for quite some time should be changed.

At the very least, it would be advantageous for President Obama, or at least Attorney General Eric Holder, to offer an explanation as to what their rationale behind defending DOMA in court is. While it is possible that Holder is pushing the defense in large part because, if they do not, other groups may come in to push a defense of DOMA that would be far more risky for the LGBT Community. So far, the Department of Justice has not offered a decent defense of DOMA.