The Justice Department announced last month that it would no longer defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) because the president and Attorney General Eric Holder now believe the law is unconstitutional.
“After careful consideration, including review of a recommendation from me, the President of the United States has made the determination that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act…as applied to same-sex couples who are legally married under state law, violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment,” Holder wrote in a letter to House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on February 23. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Obama believes DOMA is “unnecessary and unfair.”
But as CNSNews.com reported, critics of Obama’s decision said the president of the United States, who is sworn to faithfully execute the law, doesn’t get to pick and choose which laws to defend.
Three things should be noted about the President’s justification for considering DOMA unconstitutional.
First, the Fifth Amendment has no “equal under the law” clause, but the Fourteenth Amendment does.
Second, he claims implies state laws made after the passage of DOMA effectual negate it as law rather than prior law (DOMA) negating laws of states. On the face of it, the President’s action seems legitimate because federal law is supposed to conform to the limits of the Constitution, which leaves states their 10th Amendment right to determine on matters not addressed by the Supreme Law. Most marriage issues do apply here. But, again, the justification is based on the Fifth Amendment or maybe the Fourteenth.
Third, however, is the fact that marriage comes under the rubric of human sexual behavior. Men and women enter into marriage covenants long before the Constitution existed. It is a moral act of agreement in which men with women contract to much more than sexual activity, but the basis of the covenant relationship is nevertheless sexual.
As the basis of the Constitutional compact is, so is the basis of marriage. Natural law may be defined as what is self-evidently true to human nature on the basis of reason and revealed law. Critics may disagree with the last two words, but the founders who authored and accepted by vote America’s legal definition of nationhood would agree. Be that as it may, it extremely difficult to reason from human nature as it exists to acceptance of homosexual behavior or marriage of homosexuals as lawful behavior. Some medical scientists have pointed the biological and medical difficulties with it. Simply put, sex between males and females is obvious natural behavior with the benefit of keeping the human race from extinction–even atheistic evolutionists would have to agree. Homosexual behavior is at best an aberration of natural human behavior.
“Equality under the law clause of the 14th Amendment” does not provide protection for aberrant behaviors. It is supposed to guarantee the same protections against discrimination based on natural characteristics like skin color, sex, nationality, and the like. Those characteristics are inherent to human nature. It is supposed to guarantee that common laws are equally applied to all citizens, and in breaking those laws, the same equality is to be applied. That is except for the few exempted from those laws like foreign ambassadors, heads of state, Presidents, and some times the rich.
Let’s not forget, the gay community possess an average income significantly above average John and Jane American.
Even with all of their considerable buying power, the Democratic Party President cannot make the unnatural natural and unconstitutional constitutional.