Ten GOP Senators File DOMA Brief

On Friday ten GOP members of the U.S. Senate filed a Supreme Court brief against the overturn of DOMA.  Among the many citations included are two from the landmark case Lawrence Vs Texas, which struck down sodomy laws nationwide in 2003. An excerpt:

Notwithstanding the Attorney General’s belated discovery of DOMA’s allegedly unconstitutional motivation, this argument is flawed because legislative motivation is not a basis for setting aside a federal statute supported by legitimate and rational government interests. This Court’s precedents do not sup-port evaluating the constitutionality of a federal statute based on subjective characterizations of the motives of individual legislators. In any event,support for traditional marriage cannot be equated to“animus,” as Justice O’Connor observed in her concurrence in Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558, 585(2003). It would be particularly inappropriate to invalidate DOMA based on the alleged motivations of individual supporters, given that the statute was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed into law by President Clinton.

Much of the rest of the brief takes the position that there is no "animus" behind the desire to deny civil rights to gay Americans. It's just the logical thing to do.