This weekend, Attorney General Eric Holder announced that if the Supreme Court takes up a case on whether gays and lesbians have the right to marry,? he will file a brief in support of marriage equality.
Holder gave a rare interview to ABC’s Pierre Thomas while he was in London on Friday. The conversation turned to last month’s decision by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals to throw out Utah’s constitutional ban on gay marriage–the 22nd consecutive ruling in favor of gay marriage since the Defense of Marriage Act was effectively neutered last summer (since joined by decisions striking down similar bans in Kentucky and Colorado). Utah has already announced it will appeal to the Supreme Court. Holder told Thomas that if the Supreme Court grants cert to that case or any other case regarding gay marriage, the Justice Department will file a brief “that will be in support of same-sex marriage.”
Holder said that such a step is “consistent with the actions that we have taken over the past couple of years.” Just this past winter, Holder announced an expanded package of federal benefits for same-sex couples, which apply even in states where same-sex marriages aren’t recognized at the state level. Among other things, same-sex spouses now have the same rights in federal courts as straight couples, such as the right to decline to testify against a spouse. Also, they are now treated equally in federal bankruptcy cases, are be eligible for benefits given to spouses of public-safety officers who are either killed or severely injured in the line of duty, and have the same visitation rights in federal prisons as straight couples. Additionally, he has refused to defend the Defense of Marriage Act in federal court.
If the Supreme Court has to decide these cases, Holder is very confident that it will ultimately rule that bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional. In his view, the bans that will likely get as far as the Supreme Court “will not survive a heightened scrutiny examination”–that is, he doesn’t think the states defending these bans will be able to prove that they serve an important government interest. He considers the fight for gay rights to be “a defining civil rights challenge of our time.”
It’s hard to get more unequivocal than that. If there is any doubt that this current administration is the most resolutely pro-LGBT administration to date, Holder has definitely erased it.
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Darrell Lucus is a radical-lefty Jesus-lover who has been blogging for change for a decade. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook.
