After years of “evolution,” President Obama today switched his past opposition to same-sex marriage and says that he now supports the right. Obama stated that he only came to this realization after speaking with his family and gay and lesbian associates, but he now personally supports same-sex marriage. He continues to maintain however that the question of same-sex marriage must remain a state issue, which would indicate that he does not view this as a right protected under the Bill of Rights. Obama however has now distinguished himself as the only major candidate in the general election who will not oppose same-sex marriage as a personal matter.
In an interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts, Obama stated:
“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together; when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married.”
That statement falls short of stating that this is a constitutional right as opposed to personal view. In past cases, the Obama Administration has opposed arguments that sexual orientation should be given the same protection as race — even after changing its position on “don’t ask don’t tell” and the “Defense Of Marriage Act.” However, this remains an important, if belated, recognition of the unfairness and inequity facing gay and lesbian couples.
The support of state authority on the question will help Obama control the political backlash in states like Virginia and North Carolina. However, it creates an interesting contrast to the position of the Administration in court in cases ranging from medical marijuana to health care to immigration where it has rejected claims of state authority.
At the moment, it remains dangerously undefined for the Administration: is same-sex marriage a constitutional right or a personal choice in the President’s view? If it is a constitutional right, can gays and lesbians claim heightened scrutiny of review associated with race or at least gender? That does not appear to be the thrust of Obama’s comments. The fact that the Administration continues to crackdown on state medical marijuana laws as a federal question, same-sex marriage would appear to rank below the question of the use of marijuana for terminally ill patients as a legal question.
It is hard to know how to react to the news. Civil libertarians are obviously less than enthused with the long opposition of the President or the view that the President had finally reached a point where even the normally favorable White House press corp was openly mocking his position. Even Democratic stalwarts this week were denouncing Obama and telling him to “man up” and take a stand on principle. It should not take a conversation with your daughters to recognize a fundamental right after years as a state legislator, U.S. Senator, and U.S. President. Yet, he has at least finally dropped his opposition and that puts him in a better position than Romney on the question.
The President should now offer a better idea of the constitutional footing of this right. His description of his thought process notably does not reference notions of equal protection as much as basic fairness:
“This is something that, you know, we’ve talked about over the years and she, you know, she feels the same way, she feels the same way that I do. And that is that, in the end the values that I care most deeply about and she cares most deeply about is how we treat other people and, you know, I, you know, we are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated. And I think that’s what we try to impart to our kids and that’s what motivates me as president and I figure the most consistent I can be in being true to those precepts, the better I’ll be as a as a dad and a husband and, hopefully, the better I’ll be as president.”
The Golden Rule basis for this right leaves if on the same level as other personal choices and social disagreements — as opposed to a matter of equal protection or privacy. Yet, in a process of evolution, we are now at least in the same rough genus of rights. He also can rightfully claim to be the first president to support same-sex marriage.
Source: Yahoo
Yeah, Ivan, because over population, unwanted children and scarce resources aren’t real issues but somebody getting to see their loved ones when ill or get them covered by their insurance is detrimental to you and your kids because the couple in question happens to be of the same sex.
Arthur Randolph Erb 1, May 9, 2012 at 8:14 pm
“What benefit does the state get out of gay marriage? Why do we need it for the benefit of society? I can see no rational reason for gay marriage since we get nothing out of it. I will be in favor of gay marriage when gay sex results in children.”
Our selfish society seems to forget why it exists in the first place – to produce future adults capable of continuing the society.
Too bad so many special interest groups like the same-sex “marriage” crowd are running the show these days, demanding more than they deserve (think tax breaks and other benifits, but without adding to society’s numbers and, ergo, work-force), when their rights were not being infringed upon in the first place. I feel that soon mine and my children’s will be…
Damn, OS. And here I was hoping to get Brad Pitt’s nose by changing my diet and exercise habits! C’est la vie.
As far as the psychiatric community is concerned, it was not that many decades ago they practiced trephination and prefrontal lobotomies. Science caught up with practices that had been in place for generations because “that’s the way we have always done it.” The DSM-V that is currently in the process of being finalized is further fine tuning the diagnostic process.
The advent of MRI and fMRI scans, SPECT scans and PET scans have given us insights into how the brain works that were not possible two decades ago. Those techniques have made it clear that sexual orientation has a physiological basis. Wishing it were not so will not make it go away. It is not a “lifestyle” any more than the shape and size of your nose is a lifestyle.
I’m also still waiting for a rational explanation why it is okay to discriminate against homosexuals that isn’t based in your ignorance of facts, Barney.
Barney,
Actually the studies you refer to on brain structure indicate that conservatives have larger right amygdala and are more prone to react to conflict with aggression and/or fear whereas liberals have larger anterior cingulate cortex and are better at dealing with complexity and handling conflict without aggression or fear. If you want to start playing the “which one is crazy” game based on that data, the case for conservatives being limited in their reactions to situations is far easier to make than the counter case although the study doesn’t speak to that “crazy” point one way or the other. Being different doesn’t make one crazy but it is very easy to argue that being prone to irrational aggression and/or fear can make one crazy. If you still want to play that game knowing this? Be my guest.
“In the not too distant past, The American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a mental disorder. Of course this had to be changed due to political pressure. ”
Actually it changed due to scientific information and consensus among the psychological community that the classification of homosexuality as a mental illness was wrong to begin with and it was resisted by many who were subsequently shown to be relying upon flawed studies for their conclusions. These are the facts that anyone interested in doing even cursory research into the subject will find.
If you want to be a bigot, Barney, you should at least be man enough to own it.
Typo: celebrate = celibate. Damn autocorrect.
Barney, out of the total population, Catholic priests are a tiny fraction of a fraction of a percent of the total population. Of those, only a tiny fraction are pedophiles, although they get all the press. Also, since they are required to live a “celebrate” life, sexual pressures are inevitable. Since this is an anomalous population, they are not statistically significant of anything as applied to the general population.
I have data accumulated over forty years of interviewing and evaluating pedophiles. The data are there. Of course there are homosexual pedophiles, but their numbers are less than heterosexual pedophiles by a wide margin. You are entitled to your own opinion, but not your own facts.
Barney, extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Where are your verifiable actuarial data for the statistics you cite? Insurance companies keep very good data, provided they let you mine it. I don’t think your claims are verifiable–they are just that: claims. Where do you get your data? From BillO or Hannity, those bastions of verifiable truth? NOT!
Otter wrote:
“Barney, false equivalence much? NAMBLA? C’mon now, you can do better than that. Wipe your mouth—the hatred and intolerance is dripping off your chin. I have interviewed literally thousands of pedophiles and practitioners of various paraphilias over the past forty years. The vast majority of them were heterosexual. The minority–and a relatively small minority at that–were homosexual.”
The leftwing special interest group that pushes homosexuality would sell itself as a poster child of tolerance. Where’s the tolerance for people who don’t believe all the propoganda regarding homosexuality.
The percentage of homosexuals that are pedophiles are greater in proportion to heterosexuals. Those priests in the Catholic Church that were caught doing inappropriate things with children were majority homosexual. Are you among the crowd that wants to sweep groups like NAMBLA under the rug? Where’s your tolerance now?
Gene H. Said:
“You also make a false equivalence between homosexuality and pedophilia. Most pedophiles are heterosexual and it is a mental disorder that has to do with power more than sex. Homosexuality is not a mental disorder. It is a normal variation in human sexuality.”
In the not too distant past, The American Psychiatric Association listed homosexuality as a mental disorder. Of course this had to be changed due to political pressure. Who is to say the same will happen concerning groups like NAMBLA. In addition, there isn’t a false equivalence between homosexuality and pedophilia. What is the majority of priests for example that were caught in their inappropriate actions? Homosexual.
As far as the baloney regarding a amygdala, didn’t someone write a book or article that determined it was a scientific fact that liberalism was a mental disorder?
Homosexuality is not a normal variation in human sexuality. It is a disorder. It is disorientation. It’s convenient and politically fashionable to attack people who acknowledge such, and say something is wrong with their brain, or call them a bigot, but the fact still remains regarding homosexuality. It is also peculiar that the dominant social agenda pushes such behavior, when statistically homosexuals have a higher percentage of domestic violence, drug abuse, suicide rate, sexually transmitted diseases, and even a shorter lifespan.
But obama has spoken. It could be political suicide, or if we have a big enough poisoned-purple-koolaid population again come election time, he could still win.
@GeneH – Cuz they’s uzally democrats, dammit!
SwM – Did you mean UUC as in Unitarian Universalist Church, or United Church of Christ? UCC’s a bit conservative to have a female minister, much less a lesbian. Just checking. Could you post a link to the outcome of the debate, if it made the media?
BTW- My cousin and her “lady friend” as my mother would have delicately put it, are now “Dr/Ms & Dr/Ms”. I don’t mean to stereotype, but they look pret-ty darn happy with each other.
In other news: Hey, ARE, what if you or your brother had mumps or German measles as a kid, and I mean bad, so bad that you were left sterile, I mean a real case of numb-nuts? Does that mean either of you shouldn’t be permitted to marry?
Just seein’ if the shoe fits.
Barney,
“Do you realize when you use the term “sexual orientation” that such includes every orientation possible?”
Only if you’re a moron who purposefully takes words out of context to argue ab absurdum.
The only one painted into a closet, er, corner here is you by your irrational bigotry, Barney.
However, since you seem to think discriminating against homosexuals is just fine and dandy, how about you telling us . . .
why.
Exactly.
Barney, false equivalence much? NAMBLA? C’mon now, you can do better than that. Wipe your mouth—the hatred and intolerance is dripping off your chin. I have interviewed literally thousands of pedophiles and practitioners of various paraphilias over the past forty years. The vast majority of them were heterosexual. The minority–and a relatively small minority at that–were homosexual.
As for your use of the word “disgust;” and rejection of the word phobia (fear). As a behavioral profiler, I am always interested in the fear of many homophobic people of their own latent feelings of homosexuality. We did a study of 100 incestuous pedophiles who had been convicted back in 1977, and every last one of them were “straight.” I had access to so many, that it was a quite a job to limit the study to only 100, but we only needed that many for the study to have both validity and reliability. Not one gay in the bunch. Even I was surprised, and I do not shock easily.
Studies of homophobic straight people is a separate issue and a topic for another thread. This is too long already. And FWIW, this is not opinion or politics, it is science, with baseline data, statistical properties such as standard deviations and measurements of correlation. Published in peer reviewed professional journals.
No, Barney. Your ignorance of how poling works (especially when comparing polling data across polls) is only equaled by your ignorance of homosexuals and the psychology and physiology of human sex.
Homophobe is also an accurate term. If you don’t like the label, quit acting like a bigot. Or I can just call you a bigot and cut through the specificity.
homophobia \ˌhō-mə-ˈfō-bē-ə\, n.,
: irrational fear of, aversion to, or discrimination against homosexuality or homosexuals
Compare and contrast with . . .
bigot \ˈbi-gət\, n.,
: a person who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices; especially : one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance
Either one works in your case, Barney. The alliteration of Bigoted Barney plays well on the page, but have it your way. Accuracy is all I ask for and in your case either term works. See, I’m giving you a choice. Something you’re unwilling to do to others because they “disgust” you.
Gene H. Said:
“I’m glad for the LGBT community that this minor victory has taken place. Truly, I am a long time supporter for equal rights. It is a travesty that modern allegedly civilized people think discriminating against others because of their sexual orientation is even remotely fair or appropriate.”
Do you realize when you use the term “sexual orientation” that such includes every orientation possible? For example, are you discriminatory to groups like NAMBLA? Some people are orientated to have intercourse with corpses, while others have an orientation regarding sex with animals. Where do you draw the line? Or do you believe there shouldn’t even be a line? These leftwing special interest groups paint themselves into a corner and it’s fun to watch when they do.
Fear and disgust are both reactions controlled by the amygdala, Barney. Emotionally and psychologically, they are kissing cousins. That conservatives have an enlarged amygdala is a scientific fact. Thanks for demonstrating what a disproportionate fear and/or disgust reactions creates: bigotry.
You also make a false equivalence between homosexuality and pedophilia. Most pedophiles are heterosexual and it is a mental disorder that has to do with power more than sex. Homosexuality is not a mental disorder. It is a normal variation in human sexuality.
But again, do not let scientific facts get in the way of your homophobic theocratic agenda.
If you find homosexuality disgusting? Don’t engage in it. But disgust is entirely your reaction and your reaction doesn’t get to control what consenting adults do in their personal relationships and it should not interfere with others civil and human rights. Unless you’re a bigot of course. Then you’d think that’s perfectly appropriate.
Thanks for clearing up where you stand, Barney.
Not that we didn’t already have a good grasp of your take on anything not heterosexual or endorsed by your particular flavor of religion.
You can find certain biased polls to imply that everyone is in favor of a man and a man, or a woman and a woman, or a man and a horse being able to be “married” but of the general consensus – when you go out and talk to people, the majority of Americans do not support homosexual “marriage”. Even to the degree where a vote is held regarding the legality of homosexuals “marrying” and it doesn’t pass. Then a judge goes against the will of the people and reverses the decision.
Some have tried to compromise and come out in favor of civil unions instead of bringing down the definition of marriage. There are more in favor of civil unions than marriage. But as someone said earlier, what’s the point. Other than just another way to push a certain agenda. The knee-jerk reaction to those who oppose homosexual “marriage” is to call them homophobes, which is an obsolete term, since the emotion regarding homosexuality isn’t fear, but disgust.
Homophobia is a useless meaningless cliché used as a buzz word by certain special interest groups. Phobia implies fear, but of the general consensus, the emotion regarding homosexuality isn’t of fear, but of disgust. It’s shameful and embarrassing that certain hand picked special interest groups can push certain agendas with so much success. It’s also ironic how these special interest groups can preach “tolerance” but then pretend their own groups like NAMBLA doesn’t exist.