In addition, there is a significant possibility that both the federal and state DOMAs will be struck down by SCOTUS– even that marriage equality itself will be ruled a constitutional right by various federal courts (in addition to Judge Walker’s ruling on Prop 8). So a president’s public position can be just as important and given due weight, in judicial branch deliberations, too.

“The states should determine for themselves how best to uphold the rights of their own citizens. The process in New York worked just as it should.”

That sentence by the WH’s Shin Inouye appears to have the White House washing its hands of federal government responsibility for the constitutional rights arguments, being made in the courts against CA’s Prop 8 and the federal DOMA. It implies federal courts have no role– or worse, that their are NO constitutional rights for gay couples worthy of federal court scrutiny. At the very least, it fails to pay due respect to the FEDERAL courts on both coasts that are hearing the cases of gay plaintiffs CURRENTLY.

The president’s political people will serve the president and justice better by not making White House political statements that can be used and cited against marriage equality advocates in those current federal cases.

Sean’s analogy is pretty good too (and as others have alluded). The whole “states rights” line from the WH of late is too reminiscent of the argument used by some bigots against enactment of civil rights and voting rights laws in the 1960s.

It’s really a mistaken strategy (probably f/ Plouffe/ Axelrod) on a number of levels.

It is definitely a different situation, but that is the same sort of approach the president is defending here.

I think Obama is good on a lot of issues, but he needs to move forward on this one.

HRC hosted the first mainstream presidential candidate forum debate at the Reagan building and one of the questions asked of course was same sex marriage. Vt. Gov. Howard Dean said he signed the first equality bill – he didn’t get much of an applause. . Rev Al Sharpton wowed the crowed with his unequivocal support for full equality. The then Senator from Illinois Carol Mosley Braun was actually the one who first raised the position that it ought to be up to the individual states to legalize same sex marriage. When the Washington Post published a story the next day about the forum and quoted HRC’s director Elizabeth Burch as saying that in her opinion, Braun has the best position of all. Naturally, her comment was interpreted as an endorsement. The unintended result was that the conservatives ran with it and as a result, a majority of states now ban same sex marriage.

Now before you start your habitual slinging of mud in a yet another direction, be mindful that at the time, there was considerable reluctance within the LGBT community to use the courts as a pathway because it was widely believed with considerable justification, that judges were hostile to gays. Thats why we’re where we are. As someone who remembers a time when gays were jailed, there was no employment protections of any kind, can you do us all a favor? SHUT UP and DO something about it.