, contributing
editor, 365Gay Blog 03.02.2011 8:43am EST
When it comes to the Justice Department’s recent DOMA
decision, Republicans plan to get as much disinformation out there as possible.
Take the GOP’s love child Sarah Palin. She sent an email to the National Organization for Marriage to
express her deep, deep dismay with President Obama’s Justice Department.
“I have always believed that marriage is between one man
and one woman. Like the majority of Americans, I support the Defense of
Marriage Act and find it appalling that the Obama administration decided
not to defend this federal law which was enacted with broad bipartisan support
and signed into law by a Democrat president.”
On one hand this is a standard political response. She’s
part of the “honest” opposition and needs to snipe from the sidelines. Part of
the game; my side did it for 8 years when George Bush lived at 1600
Pennsylvania Avenue. Yet former Gov. Palin isn’t reading the news. The Justice
Department will cease defending one part of DOMA, not the law itself.
“…Section 3 of DOMA may not be constitutionally applied to
same-sex couples whose marriages are legally recognized under state law,”
Attorney General Eric Holder said in last week’s notice.
While the Justice Department’s move should be lauded, no
one really knows what the next step is.
“Yet it remains difficult to get a fix on exactly what the
decision by the Obama Department of Justice no longer to defend the Defense of
Marriage Act actually means – for DOMA itself, and for the broader question of
whether marriage equality is constitutionally required,” our own John Culhane
said in his column last week.
This gums up Palin’s preferred narrative. Better to throw
out an untruth, as opposed to describng an issue that is complex and murkry.