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Bob Barr & DOMA

Wednesday, May 04, 2011 10:45 AM

tags: DOMA, Quote of the Day, Rep. Bob Bar, Republicans, The Obama Administration

Rep. Bob Barr, the author of the Defense of Marriage Act, spoke in an extensive interview with The Advocate on why he no longer supports the law he authored, the Republicans’ defense of it, and the Obama administration’s pledge to continue enforcing it. “On the one hand, I can understand from a political standpoint why [the administration] is sort of bifurcating this. But to be consistent, you can’t say, ‘We don’t support DOMA and what it says, and we’re not even going to defend it from a legal standpoint, but we’re going to enforce it.’ That’s the same thing [President George W.] Bush would do: ‘Hey, I recognize this law is unconstitutional, but golly gee, you know, it’s there, so I’ve got to enforce it.’

“If any administration believes that a law is unconstitutional and should not be enforced, then I think they have an obligation to take steps to see that it’s not enforced. I don’t know exactly what the administration could do, because I haven’t sat down and analyzed it. But I know that modern administrations, both Democrat and Republican, did a lot of things through executive orders, for example, to sort of skirt having to enforce certain laws that they don’t like. And they ought to be advocating in Congress for its repeal. If they truly believe that it’s not constitutional, that it’s not proper, that’s what they ought to be doing. But on the other hand, I certainly recognize that there’s a political price to be paid for that — why they’re trying to have their cake and eat it too.”