DOMA delenda est

I'm not a terribly close watcher of the Supreme Court (the current court composition, especially Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas, tends to piss me off), but I was encouraged by what I heard yesterday.

They struck down DOMA, which was great, and halted implementation of Prop 8 in California. The latter was good, as far as it went, although I was a bit disappointed (not surprised, mind) that they didn't decide in a way that would keep other states from doing the same.

Essentially, they said that the defendants (various anti-gay bigotry groups) had no standing to defend the state's decision, if the state itself wouldn't defend it.

So a tiny bit of disappointment there, but mostly I'm pleased with the decisions.

Two minor bits of amusement, related. When talking about it, just before the announcement, I was stuck watching CNN, and they decided to show a graphic highlighting which states have approved same-sex marriage and such. What I found so amusing was that the states that allow same-sex marriage were colored RED. Very ironic decision, there. (The states that don't allow it were uncolored.)

The other funny bit came this morning on the radio, when they interviewed a woman who wasn't so pleased with the decision. She said that she was against it because she didn't think gays should be allowed to marry (unsurprising, a bigot), and, more amusingly, that the Bible said that marriage should be between a man and a woman, and that shouldn't change. I wonder how much of the Bible she's actually read. The only passages I'm aware of that specifically talk about marriage (beyond stuff like, "Jesus went to a wedding") talk about it as between a man and many women (stuff like, "If your brother dies, you must marry his wife", and the many early men mentioned as having two or more wives (Lamech and Abraham, for instance)).

Anyway, Yay, progress.

DOMA-ciliation

I heard yesterday, I think, that Obama had decided not to defend DOMA in court. I must admit, I'm very conflicted on this, on several levels.

On the one hand, I think DOMA must go. I think it's pointlessly discriminatory, and doesn't actually help anyone (though the homophobes certainly will claim it helps them. And I suppose if their peace of mind is a priority, I can't really argue with that).

But it isn't the President's place to decide that a law is unconstitutional; this is part of why the courts exist. Plus, the DoJ is basically admitting that Obama is giving them an order. Given that a significant part of the why the DoJ exists is to make sure that the executive branch is actually following the law, the President giving them orders certainly sounds like the DoJ doesn't believe in their own mandate. And that disturbs me greatly.

If the President does something clearly illegal, who else is going to pursue it? If the President is calling all the shots, then it seems to be nobody.