Chuck Donovan, a senior research fellow at Heritage, writes on their Foundry blog:

... last November, when the Defense Department’s working group unveiled its recommendations regarding implementation of a prospective repeal of the law, it noted repeatedly that DOMA made it “legally impermissible” to treat same-sex couples as married under the military’s family policy.

The report included an acknowledgement of the federal court cases challenging DOMA and referred to them as an “evolving legal landscape”—a somewhat inaccurate locution given the fact that most state and federal court challenges to traditional marriage have been defeated...

The decision announced by the navy chief of chaplains, Admiral Mark Tidd, to suspend his previous guidance until further notice brings the navy policy back into line with those of the other service branches, which had rightly maintained their fealty to DOMA and the rule of law. As Representative Todd Akin and 62 colleagues wrote to Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, “It is not the place of any citizen of this country to pick and choose which laws they are going to obey. We expect citizens sworn to defend those laws to set the example in their application.”

And we expect the Department of Justice to defend the laws as written too, but that seems too much to ask.