It’s emerged that House Republicans have decided to continue to spend taxpayer funds defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court. GOP lawmakers gave the green light to this idea in a private meeting last night, and it is expected to pass the House as part of a rules package when it is voted on today.
The optics of this move are intriguing. DOMA has already been found unconstitutional by lower courts. The House GOP has already spent over $1.5 million paying outside counsel to defend this law, and while the amount it will ultimately spend on this means little in the larger fiscal scheme of things, it comes just after House Republicans took a beating for failing to vote on aid to victims of Hurricane Sandy.
“They found the time to appropriate extra money to defend discrimination, but they didn’t find the time or money to push the hurricane relief bill through,” prominent gay advocate Richard Socarides told me today.
Keep in mind, that the a majority of Americans support marriage equality. So these Tea Party nutjobs want to throw money at a lost cause that most of us don’t think is a problem in the first place. If you voted for one of these ‘bagger posers because you thought they’d be responsible stewards of federal spending, you’ve been had.
But disaster relief for the victims of Hurricane Sandy? Well, that’s not so important that it can’t wait a little while. What’s really important is that America be saved from something Americans don’t actually think they need to be saved from, because denying people the right to marry the person they love is liberty… or something.
Go ask them, because it makes no damned sense to me.
