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WH official expresses chagrin over DOMA brief
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| Contributor | Monsieur |
| Last Edited | Monsieur Jun 21, 2009 01:58pm |
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| Category | General |
| Author | Josh Gerstein |
| News Date | Friday, June 19, 2009 07:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | President Barack Obama's staff secretary, Lisa Brown, said tonight that she had regrets about a Justice Department legal brief which attempted to defend the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act by citing cases about incestuous and underage marriages.
" It was an awful lot better that the brief that was written in the Bush administration," Brown said at a panel discussion during a conference of a liberal lawyers group, the American Constitution Society. "There's no question--personal statement--that there were some cites in there that should not—that should not have been in there...They were trying to...essentially eliminate arguments that the Bush Administration had made."
The citations in the brief have caused an uproar in the gay and lesbian community and have prompted calls for a boycott of a Democratic National Committee fundraiser next week. Gay activists are also mad that Obama has not acted to change the military's don't ask don't tell policy.
When moderator and former Clinton chief of staff John Podesta posed the question about the slow pace of action on gay issues, there was wide applause from the liberal crowd.
"I understand why people are impatient with the pace of progress," Vice President Joe Biden's chief of staff, Ron Klain, said during the same panel. "We have only been here 125 days and in those 125 days have many irons in the fire...I hope that next year when we have this conference and that question get asked it doesn't elicit the same kind of applause that it elicited this time." |
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