DOMA FAIL

Paul Clement’s Star Witness Says That Clement Incorrectly Distorted Her Work

Edie Windsor is challenging the so-called Defense of Marriage Act in federal court because the anti-gay law forced her to pay a boatload of taxes on the estate she inherited from her deceased wife. To defend DOMA in this case, lawyer for the Republican-led Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) Paul Clement sought to prove that homosexuality is a choice by quoting research work from Psychology and Gender Studies Professor Lisa Diamond.

In short, Clement quoted lines in which Diamond said that there is no consensus on the experiences that “qualify” someone as lesbian, gay, or bisexual and that some people who identify as gay later leave such labels behind. But in an excellent turn of events, Professor Diamond just filed an affidavit saying that Clement’s citation “misconstrues,” “distorts,” and “incorrectly characterizes” her work which has to do with sexual identity labels and not sexual orientation. She adds, “Counsel for BLAG never requested that I serve as an expert witness for them… If they had so requested, I would not have agreed to do so.”

It’s pretty embarrassing when someone you’ve cited for supporting evidence writes in to tell the judge that their work has been taken deliberately out of context. Of course, we never took BLAG’s crappy arguments supporting DOMA seriously to begin with.

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