Obama to Supreme Court: Denying homosexuals special rights, quotas is 'discrimination'

by Ben Johnson

WASHINGTON, D.C., February 26, 2013, (LifeSiteNews.com) – The fact that Americans have regularly voted against such pillars of the homosexual agenda as granting homosexuals special rights in hiring or college admission quotas is proof that gays and lesbians face discrimination, according to the Obama administration's amicus curiae brief seeking to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Under the section “Gay and lesbian people have been subject to a history of discrimination,” the administration cites a number of laws, most of them repealed decades ago, as well as the results of “voter referenda.”

The Justice Department document notes that attempts to add sexual preference to civil rights ordinances have “engendered significant political backlash, as evidenced by a series of successful state and local ballot initiatives, starting in the 1970s, repealing [an] anti-discrimination...law or executive order.”

“In 15 of these 21 cases, a majority voted to repeal the law or executive order,” it states.

However, even these facts may be inaccurate. The Williams Institute, a pro-homosexual think tank at the UCLA School of Law, puts the number of such voter initiatives at 115, most of them in the early to mid-1990s. “Of the ballot measures that were initiated, 58 passed, or 50% of those attempted,” it states. Its high estimate is that pro-family voters have won two-thirds of such elections

Many of these were aimed at denying homosexuals special rights based on their intimate behavior. For example, in 1993 voters in Cincinnati amended the city charter to state that “homosexual, lesbian, or bisexual orientation, status, conduct, or relationship” does not entitle anyone to “any claim of minority of protected status, quota preference, or other preferential treatment.”

Adding homosexuals to anti-discrimination laws could entitle them to the same hiring preferences and other beneficial government treatement given to minorities, something opposed by most blacks.

Polls have consistently shown the majority of Americans oppose Affirmative Action and quotas for any group. For years, pollsters have found that 55 percent of Americans would like to abolish Affirmative Action, particularly for college admissions.

Even more – 65 percent of respondents – oppose preferences for homosexuals in hiring, promotions and college admissions.

A number of commentators see public universities in Iowa and California taking preparatory steps to add sexual preference to their Affirmative Action programs – a preference system more strongly rejected by millennials than by their parents.

The administration argues, in effect, that since voters resisted liberal measures on homosexuality at the ballot box, the court should impose its definition of marriage on the federal government.

However unpopular reverse discrimination may be to the American public, it has its partisans both inside the administration and on the High Court.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who has admitted she would not have been admitted to the Ivy League without racial and sexual preferences, has told 60 Minutes, “Look, I have publicly said that I'm the very best that Affirmative Action has produced.”

The president has filed another amicus curiae brief on an Affirmative Action case now pending before the Supreme Court, Fisher v. University of Texas. Despite her good grades and extracurricular activities, Abigail Fisher said she was not admitted to the university because she is white. A Justice Department brief lauds the race-based admissions programs for giving students “the educational benefits of diversity.”

The president chose as his vote director Buffy Wicks, a woman who joined a lawsuit to keep an underprivileged white woman out of the University of Washington Law School.

Attorney General Eric Holder has likewise asked, “When do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are entitled?”

The administration has made clear sexual orientation and, at times, “gender identity,” make up its criteria of diversity, often imposing such special rights by executive order or through the federal rule-making process.

The brief attempts to portray homosexuals as a politically powerless and besieged minority so that laws such as DOMA will be considered with higher legal scrutiny. Without such a standard, the brief admits, the administration will lose its case.

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