Buzzfeed: House Republican leaders announced in a court filing Thursday that they will not defend remaining statutes similar to the Defense of Marriage Act that ban recognition of same-sex couples’ marriages."After millions of taxpayer dollars wasted defending discrimination, it’s a historic sign of the times that the House leadership is dropping its pointless quest to maintain second-class status for lesbian and gay couples," said Human Rights Campaign president Chad Griffin. I wish I could agree. It’s not a “sign of the times" that Boehner’s caucus dropped the suit, it’s that it had finally become hopeless. Republicans have not accepted equality. If there was any hope at all of forcing the VA to discriminate against same-sex spouses, you know that the House GOP would still be in that courtroom, plugging away.
The move comes three weeks and one day after the Supreme Court ruled in Edith Windsor’s case that the federal definition of marriage in DOMA was unconstitutional because it banned the federal government from recognizing same-sex couples’ marriages.
“[T]he House has determined, in light of the Supreme Court’s opinion in Windsor, that it no longer will defend that statute,” lawyers for the House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), controlled by House Republicans, wrote about veterans’ benefits statutes that similarly ban recognition of same-sex couples’ marriages.
[photo by elmada]
