Conservative Christian group “Focus on the Family” is calling on Congressional Republicans to launch an investigation of the Justice Department for what it believes is intentional mishandling of legal challenges against the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
Earlier this year, U.S. District Court Judge Joseph L. Tauro ruled on two separate but similar cases involving DOMA, and held that the act violated the Fifth and Tenth amendments of the U.S. Constitution, and forced the state of Massachusetts to discriminate against its own citizens.
Tom Minnery, Vice President of Government and Public Policy at CitizenLink (formerly Focus on the Family Action), is insisting that House Republicans investigate the Justice Department over their handling of the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, in order to fulfill the desires of the GOP’s Religious Right supporters.
Infuriated by the judge’s ruling, Religious Right activists were so assured of DOMA’s constitutionality that they maintained that the Justice Department must have intentionally mishandled the cases and purposefully lost.
Tom McClusky of the Family Research Council said that “in part, this decision results from the deliberately weak legal defense of DOMA that was mounted on behalf of the government by the Obama administration.”
On July 8, Tauro ruled that “the passage of DOMA marks the first time that the federal government has ever attempted to legislatively mandate a uniform federal definition of marriage -– or any other core concept of domestic relations, for that matter.”
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“Congress undertook this classification for the one purpose that lies entirely outside of legislative bounds, to disadvantage a group of which it disapproves,” Tauro wrote in the Court decision.
According to Minnery, “The Justice Department has failed to provide an adequate defense against lawsuits seeking to tear away this law.”
The Justice Department is appealing Tauro’s rulings.
On Nov. 9, two new challenges to DOMA were filed in federal courts in Connecticut and New York.
