With a waving campaign hand, President Barack Obama beckoned to gay voters. He promised to undo a Clinton-era law blinding the federal government to gay marriage and allowing states to ignore same-sex marriages sanctioned by their peer governments.
But with a presidential gesture, Obama has supported his Justice Department's efforts to throw out a gay couple's lawsuit challenging the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA.
His administration's lawyers argue that the Constitution sanctions preventing gay couples from securing the benefits usually accorded to married people, such as Social Security spousal benefits and filing joint taxes. Doing otherwise wouldn't be fair to taxpayers of the 30 states that specifically prohibit same-sex marriages, they say.
In them, Obama walks a tightrope between defending the law and offending his gay constituency.
Department lawyers are defending the law "as it traditionally does when acts of Congress are challenged," Obama said in a statement.
"The United States does not believe that DOMA is rationally related to any legitimate government interests in procreation and child-rearing and is therefore not relying upon any such interests to defend DOMA's constitutionality," lawyers argued in the filing.
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