GOP Senators Claim DOMA Not Motivated by Anti-Gay Animus

In a preposterous display Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and ten other Senate Republicans on Monday argued to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that DOMA isn't motivated by animus.   Never mind that there's no rational basis for DOMA except religious based prejudice or that the evidence in the trial court made it pretty damn clear that the motivation behind Proposition 8 was animus.  And Hatch's excuse that DOMA was motivated to protect the federal government from litigation is obviously 180 degrees from what DOMA has wrought as the government is faced in numerous federal court cases around the nation.  It's another example of the GOP's up is down and black is white approach to reality.  Raw Story has a piece that looks at Hatch, et al, disingenuous bullshit:

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and ten other Senate Republicans on Monday urged the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

In a friend-of-the-court brief (PDF), Hatch and his colleagues asserted that Congress’s enactment of DOMA was not motivated by “animus” towards gay and lesbian individuals. Rather, the law was intended to prevent costly litigation against federal government.

“Congress sought to mitigate this national confusion by clarifying the definition of marriage for purposes of federal law, while preserving the authority of states to make determinations with regard to their own state laws,” they wrote. “Congress sought to preserve the status quo, not disrupt it.”

In February, Judge Jeffery White of the District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that Section 3 of DOMA violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.   .  .   .  In his ruling, White noted that a House report on DOMA described it as reflecting the legislators’ “moral disapproval of homosexuality, and a moral conviction that heterosexuality better comports with traditional (especially Judeo- Christian) morality.” Members of Congress also described homosexuality as “immoral,” “depraved,” “unnatural,” “based on perversion,” and “an attack upon God’s principles.”  But Hatch and his colleagues said it was wrong for the judge to make a ruling based on the motivations of individual legislators.

I'm sorry, but if you believe this crap, then I've got some ocean front property in Arizona that I want to sell to you!