Rick Santorum described on Monday the Obama Administration’s decision not to defend the Defense of Marriage Act as “a dagger in the heart” of 1777, when the Continental Army “was struggling to muster shoes and victory,” and Thomas Jefferson and James Madison were fighting for religious freedom.
Santorum, who may run for president in 2012, made the following argument today in an op-ed for the Des Moines Register:
In the heat of the American Revolution in 1777, the Continental Army was struggling to muster shoes and victory. What were two of our most heroic founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, doing? They were arguing in favor of religious liberty, giving us the precursor to what we now know as the Religion Clause of our Constitution’s First Amendment - the heartbeat of our Constitution.Fast forward to recently when President Barack Obama claimed the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), defining marriage for federal law as one man and one woman, was “legally indefensible.”
The Department of Justice announced last month that it would no longer defend DOMA, which forbids the government from recognizing gay marriage in the federal courts, because it deemed part of it unconstitutional.
“Intellectually, morally, and constitutionally President Obama’s claim is absurd,” Santorum wrote. “And it is a dagger aimed at the heart of a core constitutional value: the free exercise of religion.”
Read the full thing here.
Jillian Rayfield
Jillian Rayfield is a Reporter/Blogger for TPM, and started as a News Intern in May 2009. She graduated from Cornell University in May 2008 with a degree in Film, and worked as a Research Assistant for a market research firm in London in between.