Chris Dodd’s plan to expose anti-gay hypocrisy February 3, 2007
Posted by Evil Bender in News and politics, bigotry, constiutional issues, wingnuts.trackback
Chris Dodd has an idea for improving the Orwellian-inspired “Defense of Marriage Amendment”:
Dem presidential candidate Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut, at the winter DNC meeting, was asked by Joe Sudbay of Americablog (via PoliticsTV) whether the federal Defense of Marriage Act DOMA law should be amended to allow civil unions created at the state level to have full parity of benefits at the federal level. Over 1000 benefits that married people take for granted, including social security and military pension partner benefits, are denied to gay couples with CUs.
Dodd’s answer raises the bar for the candidates in favor of civil unions to explain exactly how parity with civil marriage might be accomplished.
It does something else as well: Dodd’s setting a very clever trap for bigots. The way DOMA and similar state amendments are being made palatable to Americans is to claim that they’re just stopping marriage, not benefits: “civil unions” are looked favorably upon in many states as a substitute for marriage. But of course they’re not equivallent at all.
With this language in DOMA to protect the federal rights of those in civil unions, Dodd forces DOMA-defenders to either back up their claims that they aren’t trying to discriminate or vote against their own bill. I doubt this language will actually be included, but it is a brilliant idea: force the Republican base to chose between actually defending benefits for gay couples or vote against their precious bit of discrimination.
That is actually very clever. I hope other Democrats running for president have the guts to sign onto it.
Ya Haqq!