Group warns President likely to lose support from Blacks over DOMA

A groups calling itself The Black Coalition Against Gay Marriage sent a letter to President Obama warning him that if he endorses marriage between same-sex couples, he risks losing much of his African American support.

The coalition, which includes a veteran civil rights group, the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), Concerned African-American Pastors and other religious organizations, is particularly worried about Obama's intentions regarding the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

The Act is federal law enacted in the late 1990s which defines marriage as only occurring between a man and a woman, excluding unions between people of the same sex. Gay and civil rights groups have been pressuring the Obama administration to work to change or repeal the Act. "Changing the definition of marriage will have many unintended consequences which will hurt generations to come," the Coalition said in its letter.

According to the source of this story, Taylor Media Services (TMS), there is doubt as to how effective the Coalition would be in delivering its warning and undermining the president's support. TMS said that most major civil rights groups either support much of the gay rights agenda or remain officially neutral on the issue of homosexual marriage, and CORE, while a veteran group in the civil rights movement, has become increasingly conservative in recent years and is now mostly on the fringe of the modern civil rights effort.