"Gay rights aren't human rights"

From the New Civil Rights Movement:

U.S. Congressman Chris Smith earlier this week announced gay rights are not human rights. "I am a strong believer in traditional marriage and I do not construe homosexual rights as human rights," Smith said. He also suggested that the Obama administration’s "views on LGBT rights affected or hindered our support for Nigeria to defeat Boko Haram."

....

Heightening the impact of his anti-gay statement is that Rep. Smith is the chairman of the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations, and made his comments at a meeting of that subcommittee, which is a part of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Rep. Smith is from New Jersey.

Congress spends YOUR money to defend DOMA, ctd

You know how the Republicans are all for smaller government, and less government spending?  But that's not if government spending can marginalize the gays.  THAT, and they're all in favor.

From the HuffPo:

House Republican leaders have signed on to spend up to $3 million to keep defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court, according to a copy of their newly revised legal contract obtained by The Huffington Post.  

House Republican leaders took over the legal defense of DOMA in the spring of 2011, when Attorney General Eric Holder announced the Obama administration would no longer defend it on the grounds that they found it unconstitutional. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other GOP leaders hired attorneys at the law firm Bancroft LLC to represent the House in court cases involving the federal ban on gay marriage -- all with taxpayer dollars....

House Democratic leaders, meanwhile, sent a letter to Boehner later Tuesday voicing their opposition to sinking more money into DOMA's defense -- particularly given Republicans' calls for fiscal responsibility. 

"We wish to strongly reaffirm our objections to the repeated actions by the Republican leadership to secretly and dramatically increase the contract between the House and outside counsel in arguing to uphold the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in more than a dozen cases," reads the letter from House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.). 

"It is the height of hypocrisy for House Republicans to waste public funds in one breath then claim the mantle of fiscal responsibility in the next," the letter continues. "With Republicans willing to take our economy and our country to the brink of default in the name of deficit reduction, there is simply no excuse for any Member of Congress to commit taxpayer dollars to an unnecessary -- and futile -- legal battle."