Campaign:
Foes of samesex marriage vow to make it a major election-year issue in key states.
WASHINGTON — Leaders of the National Organization for Marriage, one of the main groups that backed Proposition 8 in California to ban same-sex marriage, promised Tuesday to make such marriages an issue in seven swing states critical to the outcome of this year’s presidential election.
Gay and lesbian marriages have been prohibited in 38 states by ballot initiative or by legislatures, including North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Nevada and Colorado. In Iowa, same-sex marriage is legal as a result of a state Supreme Court ruling. Those seven states are considered swing states in the November election.
National Organization for Marriage Political Director Frank Schubert accused President Obama of “orchestrating the demise” of traditional marriage.
Schubert said the Obama campaign on Monday threw the first punch by releasing a television ad featuring actress Sarah Jessica Parker telling viewers that Obama was “the guy who ended the war in Iraq; the guy who says you should be able to marry anyone you want; the guy who created 4 million new jobs.”
Obama is “clearly staking a great deal of his re-election campaign on same-sex marriage,” Schubert said. “We see the presidential election in some ways as a proxy for the survival of traditional marriage in America.” Obama’s GOP rival, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, opposes same-sex marriage and civil unions.
The Supreme Court is expected to take up the issue as soon as early next year, following Tuesday’s refusal by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to have the full court reconsider a three-judge ruling that found Prop. 8 unconstitutional. Last week, the First U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston ruled that the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutionally denies Social Security, tax, immigration preferences, and other federal benefits to married gay and lesbian couples.
Schubert insisted that if the Defense of Marriage Act, commonly known as DOMA, is reversed in court, the 38 states that deny marriage to same-sex couples would be forced to recognize such marriages from other states. Gay and lesbian marriages are legal in six states and the District of Columbia. The legislatures of two more states, Maryland and Washington, have approved same-sex marriages, but those laws will be challenged by referenda in the fall.
Some legal experts said that claim is not true. Long before DOMA was enacted, states had a presumptive right to determine their own marriage laws. Section 2 of DOMA, which says states do not have to recognize same-sex marriage laws from other states, is considered a redundant element of the statute.
“It’s just plain wrong,” said Doug NeJaime, an associate professor of law at Loyola Law School, of Schubert’s claim. “Interstate recognition of marriage has always been a state law question, and Section 2 of DOMA does nothing to change that. It just sort of states what the law already is, which is states don’t have to recognize marriages from other states.”
But Richard Socarides, a lawyer and adviser to former President Bill Clinton, who signed DOMA, said in an analysis that if the Supreme Court decides to hear the Prop. 8 case, it could rule on whether a constitutional right to marriage exists, which would apply in all 50 states.
Schubert vowed to “work very hard to let people in those states know that marriage is on the ballot. If Barack Obama is to be re-elected, the position he has taken will very likely lead to the end of traditional marriage in this country.”
Democrats are planning to hold their presidential nominating convention in Charlotte, N.C., Sept. 3-6. North Carolina just last month approved by 61 to 39 percent a constitutional amendment called Amendment One to ban same-sex marriage in the state, even though it was already illegal.
Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, said same-sex marriage will be a “central topic” in Charlotte, predicting that liberal groups will “use the president’s evolution on the issue to force it into the Democratic platform, making it an official part of what it means to be a Democrat in America.”