Tag Archives: marriage

Gay Activist Shoots Family Research Council Guard: Domestic Terrorism or Hate Crime…

Posted on August 21, 2012 by | Leave a comment

A heavily armed black gay activist with a bag of Chic-fil-A sandwichs was petrubed about the unashamed and progressive* views of the Family Research Council’s about traditional marriage. The gay man obviously was offended by very public and very exclusive adefinition FRC’s one-man and one-woman defintion of marriage. At root at the offense is the FRC’s view that gay marriage is an offense to God and serious problem for a good society.

The questions being raised is will public officials and other social institutions (especially liberal ones) define this act as terrorism or a hate crime. Another question that might surface is whether or not Christian-oriented family organizations like the FRC should be allowed to instigate hate crimes or domestic terrorism. That is, will the gays and liberal public officials deem the moral views and public activism to spread them and even make them law (as the gay activists do) a crime punishable by law.

The Infowars.com video below address the first question and comments by The National Organization for Marriage (NOM) address the second question.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5UX-hO4OHk&w=560&h=315]

http://www.infowars.com/frc-shooting-will-pro-abortion-and-gay-rights-liberals-call-it-terrorism

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NOM Comments:

Five days ago, a gay activist stormed the offices of the Family Research Council (FRC), a pro-marriage ally in our fight, attempted to barge into their offices with a loaded weapon, and when confronted by a security officer, tried to murder the guard and thereby intimidate Christians and marriage supporters everywhere. It’s the same thing that terrorists try to accomplish—use deadly force to intimidate opponents into submission.

The armed gay activist was reportedly carrying a large cache of ammunition and bags of food from Chick-Fil-A. He apparently complained about our side’s pro-marriage position. You may recall that NOM and others recently led a nationwide show of support for the CEO of Chick-Fil-A’s public defense of marriage as the union of one man and one woman. It’s been reported that the attacker may have intended to leave Chick-Fil-A sandwiches as he shot his way through the offices.

Fortunately, despite being shot, the security officer was able to stop the would-be assassin. That guard is a true hero, and his courage no doubt saved many lives. But this is a wakeup call for marriage supporters everywhere.

It’s been five days now and still the DC police department refuses to characterize the attempted murder of pro-marriage Christians as a hate crime. It’s outrageous. A gay activist tries to murder executives at a prominent pro-marriage group; he specifically complains about pro-marriage positions; and he’s carrying foodstuffs from a pro-marriage restaurant with the apparent intention of leaving them as a “calling card” during his murderous spree of terror.

And this is not a hate crime?

Can you imagine what would happen if a pro-marriage activist did something like this to a prominent gay group? It would be international news for weeks, and there would be unceasing demands for federal investigations.

The attempted murder by the gay activist occurred just one day after the so-called Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest and wealthiest homosexual lobby, publicly branded the FRC a “hate group.”

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a once-proud civil rights group that is now nothing more than a hard-left attack machine, has also tagged the FRC with this epithet, and they’ve threatened to do so with NOM as well. Our hateful crime? Opposing homosexual “marriage.”

Sadly, this isn’t the first time that an attack against a pro-marriage group has been mishandled by the DC police. Just a few days before the shooting at the FRC, homosexual activists assaulted NOM’s headquarters with a bag containing gay sex toys and soiled adult diapers filled with human feces. They also left a disgusting note designed to intimidate our hardworking staff of believers, who are doing nothing more than fighting for God’s definition of marriage.

The DC police sent officers, including an “LGBT unit” officer, to investigate the crime and almost immediately the LGBT unit declared this NOT to be a hate crime. As far as we know, nothing has been done to attempt to find the thugs responsible for this harassment.

What does it take for the DC cops to declare attacks against Christian, pro-marriage supporters to be a hate crime?

One has to wonder if we are seeing the practical manifestations of what Mayor Vincent Gray declared in the wake of the Chick-Fil-A CEO’s support for traditional marriage. Gray told reporters, “You know, when people don’t support marriage equality, it is the law here in the District of Columbia…there just is no place for them in this city.” It seems that the police department may have heard the mayor’s message loud and clear.

— From an August 20, 2012 email.

* By progressive, I mean advancing the value and inherent morality of traditional marriage and natural family.

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Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day A Success

Posted on August 2, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Although I can offer no dollar figure to measure the level of the Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day event, the long lines witnessed at the Fairfield Road restaurant
was proof enough. There were multiple lines of people streaming in and out of the restaurant. There were two lines of cars circling the building with 5 friendly attendants taking and serving orders. The lines extended into the street both at noon and at 2 PM. If the same was true at other locations across the nation, the event to support a Christian owned restaurant was a huge success indeed.

Of course, it was a wonderful political statement as well. Supporting the family and the traditional meaning of marriage is certainly worthy of support.

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Marriage: Much More Than Legal Benefits

Posted on May 16, 2012 by | Leave a comment

By David Fowler

Debates are often won and lost based on how the key terms are defined. In the cultural war, the California Supreme Court just threw down the gauntlet with their recent redefinition of marriage. Advocates of real marriage need not fear, but they must understand how to respond.

Those who want to reduce marriage to the least common denominator want to appeal to our sympathies. So, they begin the debate by urging us to look at marriage as simply a status to which the law provides certain benefits. From there it is easy to play on our sense of “fairness” by arguing that it’s not fair for some to get those benefits and not others.

But for this kind of logic to work, it is necessary to reduce marriage to nothing more than love between committed adults. Defined this way everyone can have the “benefits of marriage” and life is “fair.” But, while love and commitment are important for marriage, they are not enough to constitute a marriage.

To consider the legal benefits of marriage and who gets them before defining marriage is to put the proverbial cart before the horse. It is not the legal benefits given by society that make something a marriage. Rather, it is the nature of marriage that motivates society to give it certain legal benefits.

A Unique Relationship

The point is that marriage is not a relationship that society created in order to give some people benefits and deny them to others. Rather, “marriage” is the name that societies worldwide have given to a unique relationship between men and women that provides particular benefits to society.

By analogy, there are many geometric shapes. The word “square” represents one type of shape and “circle” another, but because each is what it is by definition, we cannot make circles that look like squares or vice versa. Likewise, there are many different relationships, even very important ones, but they are not marriages.

In other words, marriage is a real thing, not just a word. And marriage is important not because it has been given certain benefits.

Specifically, what makes the committed relationship between a man and woman different and of such importance to a healthy future society is its natural procreative potential and the unique roles each sex adds to the nurturing of the children they may raise.

To define other relationships as marriage so that everyone gets the same legal benefits is akin to redefining what a college diploma means so everyone can get a better paying job.

The California Supreme Court started its analysis in the wrong place and naturally ended in the wrong place. When marriage is reduced, its unique place in society is diminished. Doing so ultimately undermines the welfare of children and society itself.

David Fowler is President of the Family Action Council of Tennessee (FACT) who article first appeared in The Tennessean on May 27, 2008 and was posted on the FACT weblog on May 9, 2012.

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American Catholic Bishops Inconsistent On Liberty and Marriage

Posted on April 19, 2012 by | Leave a comment

By Bai Macfarlane

The US Bishops on April 12 issued a call to action to defend religious liberty and urge the laity to work to protect the First Freedom of the Bill of Rights – religious freedom.

In the USCCB’s press release, the first concern listed that prompted their call is the Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate forcing all employers, including religious organizations, to provide and pay for coverage of employees’ contraception, sterilization, and abortion-inducing drugs even when they have moral objections to them.

The Bishops don’t want the Church to be forced to pay for services or provide services to their employees that the Church knows are immoral. But sadly, the U.S. Bishops have been silent when tens of thousands of Catholic parents have been forced to pay for services and provide ‘care’ for their own children when the parents knew the services were immoral.

Every time a Catholic parent is the defendant in a no-fault divorce, and the civil court orders that parent to forcibly stop having daily access to his or her children, that parent is being forced to give ‘care’ to their own children that the parent knows is immoral. Every time the government forces that parent to pay financial support for a second separate household in which that parent is not even allowed to live, the government is ordering the parent to follow unjust laws.

By natural law, canon law (and one could even argue that by constitutional law), anyone with a Catholic marriage has the rights and obligations that both spouses agreed to accept when they married. When anyone marries in the Rite of Catholic marriage, they agree to follow the laws of Christ and His Church. Both spouses have the right and obligation to maintain a common household with their spouse and children unless there is a fault-based reason for separation of spouses (canon 1151-1155).

Neither can file for a divorce without the permission of their bishop and they cannot seek divorce orders contrary to divine law (canon 1692). But unjust laws inflict immoral separations on Catholic families every day whenever one of the spouses, for any reasons whatsoever, feels like reneging on their marital promises and files for no-fault divorce. The government’s divorce courts will coerce and force separation and divorce decrees, contrary to divine law, on the innocent spouse and children.

If the USCCB is going to be consistent with their call to action to defend our religious liberty, they will raise a unified voice against no-fault divorce practices, which are blatantly unjust. After all, the Bishops said, “It is a sobering thing to contemplate our government enacting an unjust law. An unjust law cannot be obeyed.”

This article was originally published in Spero New’s Religion Forum, April 12, 2012. Bai Macfarlane is founder of Mary’s Advocates.

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Political Leaders Protect Marriage and Children from Homosexual/Transsexual Demands

Posted on February 21, 2012 by | Leave a comment

By Wendy Wright

(New York – C-FAM) Resistance to the United States’ new foreign policy priority is emerging around the world for the same reasons it has been rejected within the U.S. Political leaders are holding the line against homosexual/transsexual demands when it comes to marriage and teaching children about homosexual/transsexual activity.

Leaders from the United Nations, UK and European Union have joined the U.S. in exerting pressure on countries to promote the homosexual agenda. Rather than advocating for human rights to encompass people identifying as homosexual, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s slogan of “gay rights are human rights” attempts to transform special preferences for homosexual persons into human rights.

Recently, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy reiterated his opposition to homosexual marriage because it opens “the door to adoption.” France’s highest court has ruled that a marriage between two men was unlawful.

“In troubled times, when our society needs to keep its bearings, I don’t think that it is necessary to blur the image of this essential institution that is marriage,” Sarkozy told a newspaper. While there may be good parents who are homosexual, “they do not lead me to think that it is necessary to inscribe in law a new definition of family.”

In Russia, St. Petersburg became the latest city to pass legislation protecting schoolchildren by barring public actions that promote homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, transgenderism and pedophilia to minors.

Vitaly Milonov, who initiated the measure, explained, “The bill doesn’t touch upon the human rights of the LGBT community. It deals purely with the direct propaganda among minors. Such propaganda is banned on the federal level and we as a regional body are only imposing sanctions. We are only talking about propaganda as this information about sexual deviations affects our children.”

Orthodox Christian leaders asked lawmakers to bar the dissemination of “gay propaganda” among minors explaining, “We do not collect signatures in order to [harm] them. If they want to be like this, let them live.” A regional governor said the ban would “serve for the good of public morals.”

The bill describes homosexual/transsexual propaganda as “able to harm the health, moral and spiritual development of minors, including [forming] misconceptions about the social equivalence of traditional and nontraditional marriage. ” Also illegal are actions or information that would normalize “intimate relationships between adults and minors.”

The U.S. and the UK criticized the bill when it was introduced last November. The Russian response was to increase the fines to ten times higher than before the U.S and the U.K. intervened. A Russian Foreign Ministry Commissioner defended the legislation, noting that it is designed to protect children.

Homosexual/transsexual activists plan to complain to the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). Human Rights Watch Europe called the bill a “blatant attack on freedom of expression.”

Last week the ECHR convicted four people in Sweden of “hate speech” for distributing literature prodding high school students to question homosexual/transsexual propaganda taught in schools. The Court said the leaflets were offensive to homosexuals and thus not protected by the freedom of expression guaranteed in the European Convention of Human Rights.

A bill in Tennessee would limit instruction in elementary or middle school to “age-appropriate natural human reproduction science.” The sponsor explained, “homosexuals don’t naturally reproduce.”

Wendy Wright is Interim Executive Director of the Catholic Family & Human Rights Institute, a New York and Washington DC-based research institute. Her article first appeared in the Friday Fax, an internet report published weekly by C-FAM and is republished here with permission.

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Moscow Demogrpahic Summit Declaration, Aimed at Survival of the Family

Posted on October 19, 2011 by | Leave a comment

The international pro-family Moscow Demographic Summit was held in June of 2011. The purpose of the Summit was to discuss the immanent problems of population decline. The following statement is is consensus solutions.

We, participants of the Moscow Demographic Summit, representing families from various social, ethnic and religious communities, leading experts in the field of the family and demography, public activists, NGOs, leaders of parents associations, representatives of the leading business, educational and diplomatic institutions, members of national Governments and Parliaments and other responsible forces of the civil society, representing 65 countries of the world, hereby declare that the Natural Family is the basic unit of society and the fundamental social value, that is a necessary prerequisite for the very existence of world civilizations and the whole humankind. The Natural Family is a necessary condition with no alternatives for survival and stable/sustainable development of all nations and states, basic and integral condition for the demographic well-being.

With reference to the objective and widely accepted scientific data and forecasts of the leading demographers, we express our deep concern about the dangers of the approaching worldwide depopulation. Despite wrong and biased information about “overpopulation” threat promoted by some mass media and international institutions, in reality already for several decades in a row we have been witnessing a global process of demographic degradation. In recent years this dynamic has assumed a threatening scale and magnitude. As a consequence of the global decrease in fertility below the replacement level (2.1 – 2.2), 42% of all humankind live in the countries where even simple replacement of old generations is not taking place. This destructive process of swift drop of fertility and birth rates has swept all the continents on our planet. In the nearest historical period, the negative demographic trends can bring about extinction of whole peoples, destruction of States, and disappearance of unique cultures and civilizations. Even according to conservative estimates by the UN, within next three decades, the total fertility rate will go down below the population replacement level all over the world. In reality, it can happen much earlier, thus making the whole world community face the unprecedented social and historical problem of humankind survival.

We are alarmed by the fact that the family institution is in a state of grave social crisis which consists in the destruction of universal family, conjugal and parental roles based on traditional family values; in the disruption of the reproductive function of the family; in an epidemic of sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS, caused by the imposition of contraceptive thinking (in terms of safe sex) and destructive premarital and extramarital sex patterns; in widespread divorce; in the spreading of cohabitation without marriage; in increasing numbers of single-parent families; a wave of social deviations (abortions, homosexuality, paedophilia, drug addiction, refusal of marriage and childbearing (the child-free phenomenon), prostitution, pornography, etc.); disruption of the process of socialization of young generations; cutting of ties among relatives and alienation of different generations within one family, etc.

We call on the governments of all nations and on international institutions to develop immediately a pro-family demographic policy and to adopt a special international pro-family strategy and action plan aimed at consolidating family and marriage, protecting human life from conception to natural death, increasing birth rate, and averting the menace of depopulation. Nowadays, in most countries of the world, against the backdrop of devaluation of family values, the rights of the family are prejudiced in the information space, in the legal and socioeconomic spheres.

We also insist on putting an end to interference with private life of the family under the pretexts of so-called “family planning”; “protection of the rights of the child”, and “gender equality”. We consider it inadmissible to continue the policy of birth control, regarding this policy as one of the greatest threats to the survival of humankind and as a means of incursive discrimination against the family. Every family has the right of reproductive choice, inviolability of family life and bringing up their children in harmony with the culture and traditions of a specific country. Parents have absolute primary and priority right to support, bring up and educate their children.

We call on public associations, religious communities, entrepreneurs, media workers, and all people of good will to get involved in combating the above-mentioned threats that destroy family and marriage.

We support people and government of Hungary in its desire to protect natural family values and inviolability of human life since conception, that are declared in the new Constitution of Hungary. We support with one voice the definition of the family given below and codified in the final document of the Dialogue of Civilizations World Public Forum that took place on 7–11 October 2010 on the Greek island of Rhodes, and we urge that this definition be given an official international status.

Family is the basic unit (first element) of society with the following inherent characteristics:

1. Union of man and woman (according to Article 16 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN General Assembly on 10 December 1948);

2. Voluntary nature of entry into marriage;

3. Co-residence of the spouses;

4. Joint household management;

5. Entry into marriage through a procedure of social recognition in the form of State registration of marriage and/or the relevant religious rite;

6. Wish to give birth to, socialize, and bring up children. Family is also a sine qua non demographic condition for the existence, reproduction and sustainable development of civilizations. The mother and the father have, inalienably and in conformity with human nature, the fundamental, priority and primary rights and duties to directly educate, bring up, protect and provide comprehensive spiritual, moral and psychological support to their children.

7. Indissolubility of marriage – initial mutual intention of the spouses to be together for life despite any difficulties of life.

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Catholic Marriage Advocate Questions Her Church’s Stance On Marriage

Posted on September 6, 2011 by | Leave a comment

On August 29, Catholics recalled the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist, who was beheaded after being imprisoned by Herod Antipas. John had boldly reprehended Herod for an adulterous relationship.

There is an undercurrent of voices standing up for marriage, especially in light of Pope Benedict’s comments about the Sunday Gospel on August 28.

Sunday’s Gospel recounted Jesus’ rebuking Peter for wanting Jesus to stay away from Jerusalem if it meant death. Pope Benedict XVI says, “A Christian follows the Lord when he accepts lovingly his own cross, which in the world’s eyes seems a defeat and a ‘loss of life’, knowing that he is not carrying it alone but with Jesus, sharing his same journey of self-giving.”

On August 25, LifeSite News emphasized how people in the younger generation have an intense desire for self-sacrificial, unconditional, lifelong married love. Their story featured a video produced by the Emerging Leaders program, showing testimonials from people who know, “society has lost something in that they are not committed to lifelong married love.” Interviewees said, “It is good to serve someone else. Lifelong commitment has an impact on everyone.”

Emerging Leaders is a project of the Ruth Institute and its goal is to empower young adults and college students to create a positive social and intellectual climate for marriage.

About St. John the Baptist, St. Bede the venerable wrote, “Such was the quality and strength of the man who accepted the end of this present life by shedding his blood after the long imprisonment. He preached the freedom of heavenly peace, yet was thrown into irons by ungodly men. He was locked away in the darkness of prison, though he came bearing witness to the Light of life and deserved to be called a bright and shining lamp by that Light itself, which is Christ. To endure temporal agonies for the sake of the truth was not a heavy burden for such men as John; rather it was easily borne and even desirable, for he knew eternal joy would be his reward.”

Bai Macfarlane, founder of Mary’s Advocates, has networked with people who she says strive to endure “marital agonies for the sake of truth.” Mary’s Advocates supports those who remain faithful to marriage after their spouses have abandoned marriage, according to Macfarlane.

Macfarlane says, “Marriage is not about self. It is about the other and it is about ones children and society at large. Sometimes marriage can even be analogous to an imprisonment, and from the world’s perspective it appears as a defeat and a ‘loss of life.’ But for those who have confidence in our valid marriage, there is no reason to lose hope; reconciliation is always a possibility. And while our spouses choose to renege on the marital life, we suffer. But if we suffer for Christ’s sake, He can use our suffering for the sake of the Church (Col. 1:24).”

David Borer, from Iowa, is faithful to his wife after she abandoned their marriage and divorced him. He had no power to stop the civil divorce, and he now is defending his marriage in the Catholic Church tribunal system. Under the canon law of the Catholic Church, David’s wife must ask the Catholic tribunal system to decree that she and he never had a valid marriage and therefore permit an annulment of the marriage.

David sees parallels between his current state in life and imprisonment. He says “people in prison lose the companionship of their friends and family and in divorce I’ve lost the companionship of my spouse and my children. I’ve been stripped of many of my freedoms. I can’t see my children everyday; I can’t assure their authentic Catholic education; I can’t stop the scandal my wife is causing our children; I don’t have financial freedom because I’m forced to pay child support on top of maintaining our marital home where our children spend half their time.”

When asked what motivates him, David says, “I’m doing this because I want to go to heaven and I want my wife and children to go to heaven. If I were to quit and go find a new ‘girlfriend,’ I fear my children would conclude that Catholicism and Catholic teaching on marriage is pointless and meaningless.”

http://www.speroforum.com/a/59407/Catholic-marriage-advocate-questions-her-Churchs-stance-on-marriage

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American Psychological Association Need Its Head Examined

Posted on August 17, 2011 by | Leave a comment

It is common knowledge that psychologists often developed emotion and other psychological problems. For many, the problems are the result of continually dealing with the problems of others. Consequently, APA professionals loose grip on themselves and sometimes on reality as well. I learned this while taking a clinical counseling course in college.

When a group of behavioral professionals can no longer recognize harmful behavior, those professionals need to seek professional help. Pretending same-sex relations are somehow normal or beneficial is a tell-tale sign that they have lost their way. Unnatural realtions cannot be made good or legitimate because the APA says so.

Various religious and denominational nor federal and state stamp of approval cannot make it right, good or natural. Not even a consensus vote can change reality that made humanity male and female and that the future of humanity is the family tradition of men marrying women and reproducing after their own kind. Reason, nature, and their Creator have concurred for a long time.

That is why the American Psychological Association’s recent endorsement of same-sex marriage (see CitizenLink article) only proves the need for its professsionals to seek counseling from those not intimately involved in the unnatural behavior not approved by nature and its God.

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Marriage and Unemployment : Some Advise on How to Cope

Posted on March 18, 2011 by | Leave a comment

Even though financial expert claim the great recession is over, its effects on marriages and families still continues. One of those devastating outcomes is unemployment. Many marriages are strained to point of breaking as a result of job loss and as well as home foreclosures.

An article published by the online publication For Your Marriage addresses some of the problems many couples are experiencing as result of unemployment. Authored by Bill Dodds, the article titled “When Unemployment Hits Home: Seven Ways to Help Your Marriage” is written from the perspective of clinical health professional Sarah Griffin who provides counseling services at the Seattle Archdiocese’s Catholic Community Services in Everett, Washington.

“Unemployment can leave an individual—and a couple—feeling overwhelmed, powerless, frightened. In a word, crushed. Yes, the partner looking for work can follow all the recommended steps for landing that next job but in the meantime…the meantime can be a long time.”

The article continues by offering seven ways to for couples and individuals can cope as well as strengthen their marriage. Following is only one of the things a couple can do. The entire article can be read online at
For Your Marriage.

“6. They can notice and appreciate that, in the middle of all this turmoil, there may well be some positives. A formerly two-income family may not be able to afford day care anymore, but now the family doesn’t need day care. A dad may be surprised to discover he really enjoys being home with the kids. (Not that it’s easier than heading out every day to a job!) Now he gets to know them, and they get to know him, in ways that wouldn’t have happened without his unemployment. A couple that has talked about, and seriously considered, simplifying the family’s lifestyle can realize that now there’s both a perfect excuse to do just that–and little option to do otherwise.”

For Your Marriage is a publication of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

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DOMA Decision: Obama’s Constitutional Quandary

Posted on March 16, 2011 by | Leave a comment

By Cameron Smith

On February 23, President Obama, in consultation with Attorney General Eric Holder, determined that the Justice Department would no longer defend Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) which defines marriage as only between a man and a woman.

The DOMA decision has unleashed a seemingly endless cavalcade of commentary regarding the constitutionality of DOMA and the merits of the traditional definition of marriage. Once again, the culture wars seem to be back in full swing as part of American politics.

Unfortunately, the most concerning aspect of the President’s decision has been conspicuously absent from the public debate. Rather than providing clarity on the executive branch’s perspective on the constitutionality of DOMA, the President has muddied the waters and acted in a manner offensive to any reasonable interpretation of the Constitution.

The President derives executive authority from Article II of the U.S. Constitution and is required to “take care that the laws [of the United States] be faithfully executed.” Article I clearly outlines that “[a]ll legislative [p]owers…shall be vested in [the] Congress of the United States….” Powers of the judicial branch are found in Article III and further clarified by Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S.137 (1803) which established the power of the Court to review the constitutionality of laws. These clearly defined functions provide a unique separation of powers that has served our country well for over 200 hundred years.

On November 2, 1994, Assistant Attorney General Walter Dellinger issued a memorandum entitled “Presidential Authority to Decline to Execute Unconstitutional Statutes” (Dellinger Memorandum). Some have suggested the Dellinger Memorandum should be instructive when considering the President’s recent actions regarding DOMA.

The Dellinger Memorandum clearly and effectively articulates that the President has ample authority to decline enforcement of legislation that encroaches on the constitutional charge of the executive branch. A number of cases including Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 52 (1926), INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919 (1983), and United States v. Lovett, 328 U.S. 303 (1946) convincingly reinforce that assertion.

Unfortunately, the Dellinger Memorandum does not effectively speak to the President’s decision on DOMA. At no point has the President or the Attorney General argued that DOMA encroaches on the President’s Article II powers. Rather, the President has made a political decision that DOMA is unconstitutional according to his interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment which has been interpreted to apply to the federal government.

To make matters more confusing, President Obama has informed the Attorney General that the executive branch will continue to enforce the law even though it will not defend it in court. Essentially, this means that DOMA will be considered law but anyone challenging the constitutionality of DOMA in court will not find the U.S. Department of Justice opposing them.

This decision begs the question why the President who has sworn to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” would continue to enforce that which he believes to be unconstitutional.

By declining to defend DOMA while continuing to “enforce” it, the President is trying to have his cake and eat it, too. The President is attempting to heavily prejudice the judicial branch’s constitutional disposition of DOMA without declaring the law unconstitutional from the White House.

If the President has the power to unilaterally declare a statute unconstitutional, then the office wields even more power than previously recognized, subject to the volatility of the election cycle. That power would radically shift the modern understanding of constitutional interpretation which has generally deferred to the Supreme Court as the arbiter of constitutionality in most cases. The President also recognizes that such a shift would mean many other potentially unconstitutional laws such as the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act could be dispatched by subsequent administrations.

In any event, the President’s decision on DOMA rests on shaky constitutional ground regardless of the ultimate constitutionality of DOMA itself. If President Obama finds DOMA unconstitutional, then he is failing to execute his constitutional Oath of Office to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” On the other hand, if he continues to enforce the law, thereby supporting its constitutionality, he must also defend it to ensure that the law is faithfully executed.

While the President may have shrewdly made the most politically expedient decision, the responsibility to uphold the Constitution supercedes politics. President Obama should be called to account by Democrats and Republicans alike, regardless of their views on DOMA.

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Cameron Smith is General Counsel and Legislative Liaison for the Alabama Policy Institute, a non-partisan, non-profit research and education organization dedicated to the preservation of free markets, limited government and strong families, which are indispensable to a prosperous society.

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