The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is a law which expressly defines marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman. Signed into law by President Bill Clinton on September 21, 1996, it is frankly a terrible and unconstitutional law which violates the Full Faith and Credit Clause of Article IV, Section 1 of the United States Constitution.

Which means that Republicans love it. Never mind that whole small-government states-rights thing they are always talking about.

Attorney General Eric Holder has stated that at least parts of the law are unconstitutional and as such DOMA will not be defended in courts by the Justice Department.

So House Speaker John Boehner decided that the House of Representative should defend DOMA and hired a law firm to do so. That law firm, King & Spalding, soon announced that they would not defend the Defense of Marriage Act on behalf of the U.S. House of Representatives. But that's cool. See the partner who took the case on behalf of King & Spalding, Paul Clement, just decided to jump ship to another firm and continue on.

This new firm, Bancroft PLLC, was probably more Clement's speed anyway. The founder of the firm is Viet Dinh (the Bush-era Justice Department official primarily responsible for authoring the PATRIOT Act) and other partners include H. Christopher Bartolomucci, who served as associate counsel to President George W. Bush from 2001-2003.

In any case, this month Bancroft PLLC made their case. And it is kind of a silly case.

In an Oct. 14 motion filed with the U.S. District Court in San Francisco, attorneys representing the House make the case that gay people "are far from politically powerless" and can't say they face "discrimination [that] is unlikely to be soon rectified by legislative means" -- unlike other groups of people who are discriminated against.

"The very significant gains made by homosexual-rights groups both in legislative terms and in popular opinion -- and the phenomenal speed at which those victories have come -- demonstrate that they have ample ability to attract the favorable attention of lawmakers," reads the 36-page brief filed by Bancroft PLLC, the firm hired by House Republican leaders to defend the constitutionality of DOMA.

See, you gays are just too good at voting and stuff so there is no need for a court to overturn the federal ban on gay marriage. With all your marching and voting and stuff you could get that thing overturned on your own if you really wanted to.

Plus, it isn't as though you guys have been discriminated against all that long. I mean, homosexuality wasn't even discovered until like 1897 or something, right?

Gay people also haven't been discriminated against for very long, so they can't say they have a history of discrimination, the lawyers say. The label of "homosexual" was "not even recognized in the United States until the late nineteenth century," they argue, citing a 2004 interview with the author of a book on gay marriage who said most anti-gay discrimination was "put in place between the 1920s and 1950s, and most [was] dismantled between the 1960s and the 1990s."

See? No biggie.

After all...according to Herman Cain you can probably just wash that gay off, right?





Well, Congressman Mike Honda doesn't seem to fully grasp the barely discriminated against gays and their mighty political power. He has decided to push for hearings about this whole using taxpayer money to fund Bancroft PLLC's defense of an indefensible law thing.

Today, US Congressman Mike Honda (CA-15), Ranking Member of the House Legislative Branch Appropriations Subcommittee, sent a letter to the Subcommittee’s Chairman calling for a hearing to shine light on the House Republican Leadership’s irresponsible, backdoor use of taxpayer money to pay the private law firm Bancroft PLLC to represent the House in support of the constitutionally-questionable Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). After having Bancroft PLLC blow through the original cap of half a million dollars, the House Republican Leadership recently modified the contract, likely tripling the cost for the American taxpayer to $1.5 million. During a time of professed fiscal responsibility, the House Republican Leadership has chosen to continue to spend taxpayer money to protect discrimination through a process that has lacked any semblance of transparency.

I'm still a little confused about how Boehner can think that there is a vast and powerful homosexual activist lobby when he thinks being gay is a choice. He has also voted against enforcing against anti-gay hate crimes. Probably because the gays are too powerful and self-chosen to need protection from hate crimes....or something.