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Broken Promise? White House Backs Off Obama's Pledge to Repeal Defense Of Marriage Act
After ThinkProgress and other outlets noted last week’s changes to the Civil Rights page on whitehouse.gov, watering down language on the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” Tips-Q noted that the website also has completely eliminated the portion objecting to the Defense of Marriage Act. As late as April 28, the website highlighted President Obama’s commitment to “repealing” DOMA, as a cached image shows:
Today, the website states only that Obama supports full “federal rights for LGBT couples”:
He supports full civil unions and federal rights for LGBT couples and opposes a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
According to ProPublica’s Change Tracker, the changes to the DOMA language were made on April 30. During his campaign, Obama repeatedly pledged to seek to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act, telling The Advocate, “I for a very long time have been interested in repeal of DOMA.” During the primary campaign, he touted his longtime opposition to DOMA, in a strongly-worded “open letter” to the LGBT community:
Unlike Senator Clinton, I support the complete repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) -– a position I have held since before arriving in the U.S. Senate. While some say we should repeal only part of the law, I believe we should get rid of that statute altogether. Federal law should not discriminate in any way against gay and lesbian couples, which is precisely what DOMA does.
Last week, after bloggers pointed out Obama’s seeming hypocrisy on “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the White House quickly revised the language to once again pledge to “repeal” the policy, rather than just change it. Will the White House similarly fix this mistake, and reinstate Obama’s campaign promise to grant gay couples their full federal rights?
Tagged as: white house, marriage equality, lgbt rights
Ali Frick is a Research Associate for The Progress Report and ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
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