From the perspective of LGBT rights and equality under the civil laws, there are many days that it seems as if Barack Obama needs to be on some type of bi-polar medication. On the one hand he directs his Justice Department to stop defending DOMA in pending court case and on the other hand he has the Immigration Service vigorously working to deport foreign spouses of same sex couples. I don't get it and it drives me to distraction. It also makes it difficult for me to be an enthusiastic Obama supporter. DOMA is either viewed as unconstitutional or it's not. One cannot have it both ways, yet that seems to be Obama's objective. It's enough to give one whiplash from the back and forth inconsistency. A case in point is the situation of Henry Velandia, a native of Venezula (pictured at right) who married his partner Josh Vandiver in Connecticut last year. The INS is hot to trot to deport Velandia and only the intervention of a federal judge has given Velandia a reprieve from deportation. Obama needs to be consistent and flat out state that DOMA is an unconstitutional law based solely on religious discrimination - with a sole aim of punishing LGBT couples for religious noncompliance and making them legally inferior as a consequence - and that he will uniformly direct deportations until the pending court cases are resolved. Naturally, some of the political whores in the GOP were not happy with the development since their Christianist masters continue to seek the dehumanization of LGBT citizens.. Here are highlights from the New York Times on Velandia's temporary reprieve:*
Venezuelan, Henry Velandia, had been awaiting the hearing with dread, since immigration authorities had said it was the last step before his deportation. Mr. Velandia, a dancer, was legally married last year in Connecticut to Josh Vandiver, a graduate student at Princeton. Mr. Velandia was denied legal residency as Mr. Vandiver’s spouse because under a federal law, the Defense of Marriage Act, immigration authorities do not recognize same-sex marriage.
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On Thursday, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. intervened in a different immigration case involving a same-sex couple, suspending the deportation of a man from Ireland and sending his case back to the immigration appeals court, asking it to consider several possible grounds on which the Irishman might qualify for legal residency.
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Citing the move by the attorney general, Judge Alberto J. Riefkohl of immigration court in Newark postponed Mr. Velandia’s deportation until December at the earliest. The judge said he wanted to allow time for the attorney general and the appeals court to work out whether a gay partner might be eligible under some circumstances for residency.
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Judge Riefkohl noted in the hearing that Mr. Velandia and Mr. Vandiver were a married couple, and he said he wanted to wait for the outcome of the immigration appeals court’s reconsideration of the case of the Irish immigrant. “We won the victory we were looking for,” said Lavi Soloway, the lawyer for Mr. Velandia and Mr. Vandiver. “The government acknowledged that Henry’s removal was no longer a foregone conclusion.”
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Representative Lamar Smith of Texas, the Republican who is chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the attorney general had “instructed an immigration court to ignore DOMA in future rulings.” Mr. Smith said the administration was “coming dangerously close to giving the impression they don’t care what the law says.”
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Mr. Mundy said he was optimistic about the significance for gay immigrants of Mr. Holder’s action. “It is an extraordinary measure,” he said, “and it sends a clear message that the Obama administration intends to do away with DOMA in its entirety.” Ms. Tiven, of Immigration Equality, was more cautious. “This is not yet the solution that thousands of families clearly need,” she said.
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