In an exclusive pre-election interview with WeHo News, Congressman Adam Schiff, West Hollywood’s new representative on Capitol Hill, lauded the President’s joining the amicus brief urging the Prop 8 be overturned and his anti- Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) commitment, pledged to fight helicopter noise and cast the sequestration as harmful to the economy and our military readiness.

Rep. Adam Schiff joined 212 of his Congressional colleagues in filing an amicus brief before the United States Supreme Court in U.S. v. Edith Schlain Windsor, a landmark challenge to Section 3 of the 1996 DOMA. Section 3 defines marriage for purposes of federal law as “only a legal union between one man and one woman,” excluding same-sex couples from all marriage-based federal responsibilities and rights.

Rep. Adam Schiff joined 212 of his Congressional colleagues in filing an amicus brief before the United States Supreme Court in a challenge to DOMA.

 He applauded the Obama Administration’s decision to join the case against Prop 8, the California case that stripped LGBT people of their right to marry, saying, “The Administration’s position is one that I whole-heartedly agree with, and am proud to support. Marriage equality extends one of our most basic rights of citizenship to all Americans – the right to marry the person you love. By attempting to deny same-sex couples of the right to marry, California’s Proposition 8 has one purpose – to discriminate and marginalize one group of people. We have to challenge these discriminatory laws at all levels, and that’s why I joined my colleagues in filing a friend of the court brief challenging DOMA, as well.”

He has long been active in fighting House Republican majority efforts – through the House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) – to defend DOMA before the Supreme Court. In the brief filed in the Windsor case, he said, “Section 3 of DOMA is unconstitutional and should be struck down because there simply is no legitimate federal interest in denying married same-sex couples the legal security, rights and responsibilities that federal law provides to all other married couples.”

In the Windsor case, the federal government taxed Edie more than $363,000 when her spouse, Thea Spyer, passed away in 2009. The couple first met in 1965 and married in 2007, after an engagement that lasted more than 40 years. Yet, when Thea died, the federal government treated them as complete strangers because of DOMA, significantly reducing Edie’s inheritance by denying her protections from the estate tax that other married couples receive.

Because there appears to be no basis for discrimination against same-sex couples’ legal protections under marriage law other than cultural discrimination, he said, “It’s my belief that marriage equality will soon become the law of the land and I hope that the Court upholds the decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, finding that Prop 8 was unconstitutionally discriminatory towards same-sex couples who simply want to exercise their basic human right to marry the person of their choosing. Additionally, the Court should uphold the lower courts’ decision to overturn DOMA on the grounds that it violates our constitutional right to equal protection.”

Rep. Schiff with Mayor Jeffrey Prang at the 2012 LA Gay Pride festival. Rep. Schiff was the first sitting congress person to ride in the parade and attend the festival.

While to two worst helicopter nuisances – Lindsey Lohan and Paris Hilton - have departed WeHo and the inconveniences springing from chopper noise is down somewhat, Congressman Schiff is pushing hard to make his bill regulating and limiting the noise a reality.

The bill he introduced for Los Angeles County, in which several affected cities and local organizations have joined to support of the bill (including West Hollywood), called the Los Angeles Residential Helicopter Noise Relief Act (H.R. 456) would require the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to provide Los Angeles County residents relief from the noise caused by low-flying helicopters above residential neighborhoods.

For years, city leadership has attempted to ameliorate the noise made by low flying helicopters, but because the FAA is a federal agency, the city council has gotten little traction until Rep. Schiff took over as the city’s congressional representative.

Last week, the City of West Hollywood voted unanimously to adopt a resolution in support of the bill, less than a week after Mayor Jeffrey Prang proposed it, saying that the, “challenge we have with helicopters strafing our neighborhoods and causing havoc” was one of the first conversations he had with Rep. Schiff when he began representing West Hollywood earlier this year due to redistricting.

Rep. Schiff said, “Residents across the Los Angeles area – from Pasadena to the Coast, and the Valley to the Hollywood Hills – are affected by intrusive, disruptive and often non-emergency related helicopter traffic about their neighborhoods and homes. Angelinos deserve peace and quiet, and if the FAA won’t act to regulate disruptive and preventable helicopter traffic noise, Congress must pass this legislation to give residents the relief they deserve.”

Rep. Schiff took an early and strong stance against helicopter noise above WeHo's urban village immediately upon taking over its representation from Henry Waxman.

 During the interview, conducted before the sequestration deadline, Rep. Schiff saw no way to avoid the hatchet, saying, “It would be nice to avoid and to implement some reasonable balance to the issues presented, but I don’t see how we can negotiate a way around the sequester before Friday. Sequestration cuts the good with the bad, the efficient with the inefficient, and is the latest in a series of man-made and completely avoidable crises.”

He saw tremendous disruption in services for West Hollywood residents on the near horizon, including “air travel – anyone who uses the airways will see longer lines at customs and disruptions of services due to potential air traffic control layoffs. In education, we can expect to see more cuts to programs we need to educate our children.

“With sequestration, education will be among the hardest hit of the nation's priorities. This is tragically shortsighted – the most important investments we make are in our schools and in the next generation. In our zeal to cut the debt, we must not reduce our investment in the future or we will have struck the worst of all bargains.

“It’s deeply frustrating because our economy is finally poised to recover if we could just get out of the way. Instead we are adopting an austerity budget that is certain to cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs. Reducing the debt is important, but it isn't a substitute for an economic plan.”

He warned, too, off taking an ax rather than a scalpel to military spending, as was exemplified by the decision to delay deployment of the USS Harry Truman as the Pentagon reduced the number of aircraft carriers it has in the Gulf from two to one.

“With the situation in Syria unsettled,” said Rep. Schiff, “and our other needs in the Middle East, it is incumbent upon us to maintain levels of military readiness, and the sequester makes that more difficult.”

On the Syrian situation, as a member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Schiff has an up close and in depth view of the devolution of the Bashar Hafez al-Assad regime. Reminded that the regime might resort to chemical weapons in defense of its government, he said that, while he could disclose only a little because of national security, that “If America needs to go in to prevent the use of chemical weapons, we are prepared to do so.”

The Kurdish semi-autonomous areas in Syria that border Turkey are also rife with chaos, and Rep. Schiff said that America was doing all it could to provide “non-lethal support to the Kurdish people in an effort to prevent the worst of the spill over from interrupting their autonomous government.”