Last weekend, Eric Holder announced an expanded package of federal benefits for same-sex couples--benefits that apply even in states where same-sex marriages aren't recognized. Per a Justice Department directive implemented on Monday, same-sex couples will have the same rights in federal courts as straight couples, including the right to decline to testify against a spouse). They will also be treated the same as straight couples in federal bankruptcy cases and qualify for all benefits given to surviving spouses of police officers who suffer debilitating injuries or die in the line of duty. They will also have the same visitation rights as straight couples in federal prisons, and inmates with same-sex spouses will also qualify for compassionate release or a reduction in their sentences to care for an ailing spouse.
As you might expect, this didn't sit well with the religious right. It took some time for them to react, but People for the American Way discovered that at least one Christianist group has already decided to roll out the napalm. The American Family Association is urging its supporters to demand that Holder be impeached.
PFAW stumbled on an alert that was blasted out to AFA supporters and also posted on Facebook which urges its supporters to get their congressmen to support H. Res. 411, a draft of four articles of impeachment against Holder. The bill was introduced by Pete Olson of Texas, who holds Tom Delay's old congressional seat. Its cosponsors are pretty much a who's who of wingnuts--Lynn Westmoreland, Michele Bachmann, Louie Gohmert, Steve Stockman, Jim Bridenstine and Thomas Massie are among them. Predictably, it claims that Holder is "trampling on states' rights and disenfranchising voters in states defining marriage as only between one man and one woman." Never mind that this directive only applies to federal institutions.
I have to wonder--is this the same argument that segregationists used in the civil rights era? Moreover, the AFA is being rather disingenuous in describing this directive as an act of "public corruption." As near as I can determine, the Wildmons didn't make a peep during the Plame Game, after the discovery that we waterboarded detainees in Gitmo, or after it became clear beyond all doubt that Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq.