[A]s I have pointed out before, Obama loves to raise political donations; he has plainly begun to worry about his standing among the rich homosexuals who used to fawn over him. As the New York Times' Adam Nagourney first reported, the California legal brief was one reason that a prominent gay supporter of Obama's went to the Oval Office in late June to express, for 15 full minutes, the gay community's deep disappointment.
And so this week we get a new legal brief from the Obama Administration in the California case, this one denuded of the execrable incest defense. This time.... Obama flip-flops again - now back to his campaign position. (It must be dizzying to work in the White House these days.) Now the Administration says it opposes DOMA and wants it overturned - but that tradition dictates that it defend the law. And that is why, the White House said in a statement, "the Department of Justice has filed a response to a legal challenge to [DOMA], as it traditionally does when acts of Congress are challenged." ....
Legalistically speaking, the tradition argument is true, but it's yet another Obama dodge.....As Eugene Volokh of UCLA told me Aug. 18, there is nothing in the constitution or the law that would have prevented the Department of Justice from sitting on the sidelines in the DOMA case.
Nothing except politics. Obama's triangulation between left and right has become excruciatingly obvious on this issue, and he's not quite as deft a politician as Bill Clinton at keeping his left flank at bay. I wouldn't be surprised if, next summer at the 32nd Fire Island Pines fundraiser for Lambda, I hear booing when the President's name is mentioned.
Or as the Advocate put it:
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