The 2000 Republican Party platform endorsed DOMA in general terms and indicated concern about judicial activism: "We support the traditional definition of 'marriage' as the legal union of one man and one woman, and we believe that federal judges and bureaucrats should not force states to recognize other living arrangements as marriages." The Democratic Party platform that year did not mention DOMA or marriage in this context. In 2004, President George W. Bush endorsed a proposed constitutional amendment to restrict marriage to opposite-sex couples because he found DOMA to be vulnerable: "After more than two centuries of American jurisprudence and millennia of human experience, a few judges and local authorities are presuming to change the most fundamental institution of civilization. Their actions have created confusion on an issue that requires clarity." In January 2005, however, he said he would not lobby on its behalf, since too many U.S. senators thought DOMA would survive a constitutional challenge. President Barack Obama's 2008 political platform endorsed the repeal of DOMA. On June 12, 2009, the Justice Department issued a brief defending the constitutionality of DOMA in the case of "Smelt v. United States", continuing its longstanding practice of defending all federal laws challenged in court. On June 15, 2009, Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese wrote an open letter to Obama that asked for actions to balance the DOJ's courtroom position: "We call on you to put your principles into action and send legislation repealing DOMA to Congress." A representative of Lambda Legal, an LGBT impact litigation and advocacy organization, noted that the Obama administration's legal arguments omitted the Bush administration's assertion that households headed by opposite-sex spouses were better at raising children than those headed by same-sex spouses. On February 23, 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder released a statement regarding lawsuits challenging DOMA Section 3. He wrote: After careful consideration, including a review of my recommendation, the President has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny. The President has also concluded that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to legally married same-sex couples, fails to meet that standard and is therefore unconstitutional. Given that conclusion, the President has instructed the Department not to defend the statute in such cases. He also announced that although it was no longer defending Section 3 in court, the administration intended to continue to enforce the law "unless and until Congress repeals Section 3 or the judicial branch renders a definitive verdict against the law's constitutionality."