I get that the Justice Department defends congressional laws in court, and that it would be extraordinary for Justice not to defend a law.

We’ve seen bold, extraordinary steps from President Barack Obama and his administration on other issues, in other arenas, but last week’s offering to GLBT federal employees was meager, not extraordinary.

The official White House Pride proclamation fell far short of even ordinary — a bland, empty statement from a man known worldwide for eloquent and convincing pronouncements.

And the Justice Department’s recently filed defense of the Defense of Marriage Act? The same old same old — an indefensible defense of an indefensible law that yes, once again compared same-sex marriage to incestuous family relationships.

Same-sex couples can now legally marry in Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, and a number of same-sex couples legally married in California before Proposition 8 was passed and upheld by the state’s high court.

Those couples have access to the same state rights and benefits of married heterosexual couples in their states, but not to the more than 1,000 federal rights and benefits, including, perhaps most importantly, the right to Social Security survivors’ benefits.

This is because the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman, prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages and allows states to refuse to recognize such marriages from other states.

DOMA states, “In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word ‘marriage’ means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.”

The Justice Department is strongly defending DOMA against a legal challenge brought by a same-sex couple married in California last July.

Arguments have been made that the couple’s case is weak, that it is not the best suit to advance through the courts and take down DOMA.

Maybe so, but Justice’s intolerable brief defends banning federal benefits for married same-sex couples claiming that to continue to do so is cheaper for the government; that DOMA is a policy of government “neutrality;” that DOMA is consistent with due process and equal protection principles guaranteed in the Constitution.

Justice argues that it is OK to deny federal marriage benefits from gay married couples because heterosexual marriages are “the traditional and uniformly-recognized form of marriage” and that DOMA protects federal taxpayers “in other states to subsidize a form of marriage that their own states do not recognize.” In other words, Justice has interpreted the quest for equal protection as a quest for freebies of some sort.

I’ll remind you that Obama once called DOMA “abhorrent,” a characterization that could be applied to Justice’s brief.

During his presidential campaign, Obama said he would be a fierce advocate of DOMA’s repeal. There is nothing on the record to suggest he has done anything to dump DOMA.

So now, what can we expect from the administration in the next week, when the Justice Department is due to file its response in a suit brought by the Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders on behalf of married same-sex couples in Massachusetts?

Sadly, I think we cannot expect anything extraordinary. Sadly, I think we can expect the same old same old discrimination. To quote White House spokesman Shin Inouye: “Until Congress passes legislation repealing the law, the administration will continue to defend the statute when it is challenged in the justice system.”