Poor Mojo's Newswire

For nearly two years, House Republicans paid conservative superlawyer Paul Clement $520 an hour to defend the anti-gay Defense of Marriage Act in federal court — and then sent the bill to the American taxpayer. In total Clement has now cost the American people up to $3 million for his efforts on behalf of this unconstitutional law. Last night, we taxpayers finally found out what we were paying for — a 60 page brief explaining why the justices should leave marriage discrimination untouched.

As decades of precedent establish that the Constitution should provide a shield to minority groups when prejudice leaves them without adequate recourse to the political process, Clement includes a section discussing just how very powerful and completely capable of vindicating their rights at the ballot box gay men and lesbians have become. Same-sex marriage is supported by President Obama and Vice President Biden! Less than half of Congress filed a brief agreeing with them! A magazine once wrote an article about how influential the Human Rights Campaign is! For the first time in history, an entire 1 percent of the Senate is openly gay!

After touting the immense political clout of a group that, after 226 years of American democracy, finally managed to elect a single person to the upper house of Congress, Clement then drops this line:

In short, gays and lesbians are one of the most influential, best-connected, best-funded, and best organized interest groups in modern politics, and have attained more legislative victories, political power, and popular favor in less time than virtually any other group in American history. . . . Gays and lesbians not only have the attention of lawmakers, they are winning many legislative battles. And the importance of this factor in the analysis cannot be gainsaid. . . . [G]iven that the ultimate inquiry focuses on whether a group needs the special intervention of the courts or whether issues should be left for the democratic process, the political strength of gays and lesbians in the political process should be outcome determinative here.