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Political Hay
Evolutions in Obama’s America
He has long signaled his support for gay marriage.
In The Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama signaled that his nominal opposition to gay marriage would one day disappear. He made it known to close readers that they shouldn’t take his position on the issue too seriously.
“In years hence I may be seen as someone who was on the wrong side of history,” he wrote. He added incoherently that “it is my obligation not only as an elected official in a pluralistic society, but also as a Christian, to remain open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided.”
He was very eager to be proven wrong. But all of his faux-candor and pained honesty in the book didn’t lead him to disclose the real reason for his nominal opposition to gay marriage: He knew that he couldn’t win the presidency as an open supporter of it.
Now he wonders if he can win reelection as one. It appears that he hasn’t made up his mind yet, but he wants the base of his party to know that he is now on the “right side of history” even if he can’t make that explicit by changing his position formally. To this end, the White House has let it be known that his view is “evolving.” This is due, White House officials say implausibly, not to a safer political climate, but to his deepening moral reflection on the issue.
Exposure to the experience of seeing gay friends marry is causing him to change his mind, say White House officials. Here Obama is borrowing a page from Bill Clinton, who cited that same reason for his shift from signing the Defense of Marriage Act to endorsing gay marriage.
At Wednesday’s press conference, Obama said it was a “good thing” that a definition of marriage he nominally supports had been demolished in New York. “We’re moving in a direction of greater equality,” he said. Other Democrats nominally opposed to gay marriage also cheered the state legislature’s passage of it.
Republicans have an enormous opportunity here to cast Obama and the Democrats as the de facto party of gay marriage, but they probably won’t take it. George W. Bush had used the issue against John Kerry effectively (Kerry refused to endorse efforts in Ohio and elsewhere to oppose gay marriage and this hurt him badly), but John McCain couldn’t be bothered to raise the issue and one can imagine an establishment 2012 Republican nominee following the same course. Establishment Republicans say they want to reach out to Hispanic and black voters, but this never leads them to capitalize on one of the few issues where those voters have broken with the Democrats.
Obama’s hesitancy to change his position formally suggests that the confident pronouncement from gay marriage supporters that the American public is ahead of the “political class” on this issue is overstated. Were that the case, Obama would change his position immediately. He is hesitating because he can see that members of the left-wing political and judicial class are still more liberal than the country on this issue. Gay marriage has passed a handful of times judicially and legislatively but never directly by the people. Referendums have failed everywhere they have been tried, and it is not even clear that a gay marriage referendum in New York would have succeeded.
Of course, if Obama escapes into the safety of a second term, his purported moral reflections on gay marriage will speed up and rapidly turn into a formal endorsement of it. And then we will hear him talk again about his “transformative” presidency and the sweeping historical changes he has bravely engineered. The spread of gay marriage in America will be cast as another glorious milestone of “progress” for his administration.
But, according to Elizabeth Abbott, writing for the Huffington Post, gay marriage isn’t entirely new to history. “Powerful males” in pagan antiquity dabbled with it, she writes, as did some Native American tribes. She dredged up a quote from the Roman poet Juvenal about an aristocrat named Gracchus who had entered into a gay marriage:
Gracchus gave a dowry of 400,000 sesterces to a cornet player — or perhaps he’d performed on a straight horn. Marriage documents were signed, felicitations offered, they sat down to a great banquet, and the new bride lay in her husband’s lap.…
Father of Rome, how came such sacrilege to your Latian shepherds? How is it, Mars, that such an itch possessed your descendants? Just look at it: a man of high birth and estate is given in marriage to a man, yet you do not shake your helmet, nor strike the earth with your spear, nor complain to your father…
If we live long enough, [homosexual marriage] will happen, and happen openly; they will even want it reported in the city gazette.
In Obama’s America, which is going the way of Rome, that day has come.
About the Author
George Neumayr, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is co-author, with Phyllis Schlafly, of the new book, No Higher Power: Obama’s War on Religious Freedom.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (46) | Leave a comment
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Alan Brooks| 6.30.11 @ 7:05AM
George F. Will says Americans now think of homosexuality as being "lefthanded" (his word). And I look up to Will now that WFB and Goldwater (who was an honest libertarian/quasi-libertarian) have departed.
Anyone here quoting the Bible on homosexuality means nothing to me- am not a fundamentalist.
But think and do what you want, just count me out.
Witnessing to the world?: concentrate on witnessing to your families.
Purpleguy| 6.30.11 @ 7:41AM
Benign neglect is better than extreme hatred, for sure. But no one wants to suffer the indignities of second class citizen, innuendo, sarcasm, hurtful and hateful speech just because of who they are. That's what gay rights are all about. Do what you want, but let gays be equal under the law - it is their right as Americans. They are American first and gay second.
Alan Brooks| 6.30.11 @ 7:47AM
You convince me, Purple, now you have to convince them. These people play hardball; and America as a whole has a hard sell way of doing things.
They are ROUGH TRADE.
Alan Brooks| 6.30.11 @ 8:38AM
"gay hecklers attack Obama for not being pro-gay enough"
Alan Brooks| 6.30.11 @ 8:45AM
...Purpleguy,
Obama can't win for losing! he's not pro-gay enough for the Stonewall types; not pro-DOMA enough for the rubes.
Purple Lips| 6.30.11 @ 9:32AM
The President is a androngynous metrosexual. And for that sin gays will never forgive him. He isn't a true believer. At least in Clinton they knew they had an overindulgent hillbilly who would go to bat for them for no other reason than to stick it Newt Gingrich. With Obama, one never knows how deep his commitment is to anything. He loves the trappings and privleges of the office, but he prefers to outsource about everything. He come off as some effette comospolitan intellecutal, when in fact he is just plain lazy and disinterested.
Redstateboy| 6.30.11 @ 12:32PM
more to the point "Perp" - Hussein is an ineffectual boob who will be an asterisk in Presidential History.
Both you and the other Slave Party tool - Brooks - even with your poor reading comprehension skills, should be able to conclude from the source rich articles written here at TAS that Your Messiah is a Liar and a shameless, unprincipled political opportunist but..... you and other Slavers support him religiously anyway.
Alan Brooks| 6.30.11 @ 11:47PM
Slave party was the Dems before 1865. Living in Dixie, you ought to know.
Kishego| 6.30.11 @ 2:52PM
Gays have EQUAL RIGHTS NOW !! They have the same rights that I do, no more no less as it should be. They are perfectly free to marry a woman just like I am. You progs want exclusive rights for deviant sexual behavior. If you were intellectualy honest, you would also advocate for polygamy or even bestiality, it's all one and the same, deviant sexual behavior outside the norm of nature.
Alan Brooks| 6.30.11 @ 11:48PM
All sex is dirty- isn't about the love of Jesus Christ.
Purpleguy| 7.4.11 @ 8:28AM
when you die, your wife inherits all you own - no child, no sibling, no parent would be allowed to question she's your spouse (well, they could question it, but it would be a tough legal slog) ; she shares your financial responsibilities while you're alive; she inherits your social security benefit when you're gone; she speaks for you in any legal, medical sense if you cannot. If you die, she is sole guardian of your children by law; there are dozens of laws and rights that uphold the bond legally between you. That is NOT the case for a gay relationship. They don't have equal rights to yours, and suspect if it was easy to tell someone was gay outwardly like skin color, they would have a much harder time in life. Look how we treat effeminate males, as if they were gay. If you don't know any of this, go learn something before opening your pie hole and proving you don't know anything but bigotry, hatred and talking points.
Norm of nature is norm to YOU, as if you are the final arbiter of all things normal. Just as lust in your heart is a commission of adultery to God, marriage is a union between two people whether the outside world of man sanctions it or not. All gays are asking for is legal status as a couple. If you really want to worry about marriage and the attack on marriage - ban DIVORCE - it is the true enemy of anyone's marriage. You can ask Newt Gingrich about that one - he's an expert.
lydia | 6.30.11 @ 1:35PM
I am a 28 years old doctor, mature and beautiful.and now I am seeking a good man who can give me real love , so i got a username Andromeda2002 on--s'e'ek'c'ou'ga'r.c óm--.it is the first and best club for y'ounger women and old'er men, or older women and y'ounger men,to int'eract with each other. Maybe you wanna ch'eck 'it out or tell your friends!
Fredrich the Great was gay, and he had 1 son. However, after his son was concieved he moved out his wife's bedroom.
Clint| 6.30.11 @ 2:24PM
Apparently, lydia's not gay.
KyMouse| 6.30.11 @ 5:05PM
"Powerful males" indeed have "dabbled" in homosexual marriage throughout history, but which societies have considered it absolutely equal to heterosexual marriage? Not the Greeks, not the Romans, not the Egyptians -- what did they know that we have yet to find out?
I'm not impressed that some or even all tribes in this country permitted homosexual marriage. According to "Boone: A Biography" (Robert Morgan), tribes in my part of the country often let visiting pioneers have sex with their wives during pioneer times, as a gesture of friendship. How many of us seriously think that's worth emulating, too?
As for "witnessing" and quoting the Bible -- if you saw someone driving down a road and you knew that the bridge was out, you'd do what you could to warn that person to turn back. Well, those of us who believe the Bible has proven its divine origin (through fulfilled prophecies about Israel, and other factors) believe that God is serious when He warns about homosexual activities.
We're all sinners, and most of us still admit that stealing, lying, adultery, and so on are still sins. Same-sex relationships are increasingly considered normal, healthy, virtuous, etc. by society, and that's one reason some of us still point out God's warnings. At is core, the push for same-sex marriage is a challenge to biblical authority. Someday we'll see if He was serious about this -- whether or not we'll enjoy His answer remains to be seen.
Michael Tomlinson| 6.30.11 @ 7:17AM
Come out, come out, come out of the closet Barack.
Alan Brooks| 6.30.11 @ 7:50AM
But you all have relatives who are gay: preach to them of the evils of being a 'sodomite'. Tell them, not us.
Rebuking begins at home.
Michael Tomlinson| 6.30.11 @ 8:27AM
Come out, come out, come out of the close Barack. It is time for transparency.
Alan Brooks| 6.30.11 @ 8:41AM
Obama is gay?? geez, how did his two daughters come into the world? parthenogenesis?
Purple Lips| 6.30.11 @ 9:40AM
Fredrich the Great was gay, and he had 1 son. However, after his son was concieved he moved out his wife's bedroom.
The One Who Runs Like a Duck| 6.30.11 @ 9:44AM
Didn't you ever see Brokeback Mountain, Alan? When you have had a gay nanny there are two things that are going to happen. People will say you run like a duck and you will have a confused sexual identity. Just substitute golf for fishing and I am living the Brokeback dream. I just can't quit Joe Biden. Going golfing this weekend, wink, wink. Closing gitmo the day after the election. You can trust me this time, baby.
Pat| 6.30.11 @ 11:16AM
McGreevey managed it. A wife and kids are necessary political props.
Kishego| 6.30.11 @ 2:55PM
Easy, they're Bill Ayers Kids. He nailed Moochel while he was writing Obumblers books.
Denver Todd| 6.30.11 @ 8:11AM
Gay marriage doesn't offer anything to the homosexual community whatsoever except for legislated acceptance. Otherwise, why would anyone want to be encumbered by its obligations and restrictions?
Michael Tomlinson| 6.30.11 @ 8:28AM
Can you say massive insurance payouts for AIDS?
Alan Brooks| 6.30.11 @ 8:29AM
Naturally it is placebo, so is religion, art, etc. It's all feel-good.
Alan Brooks| 6.30.11 @ 8:31AM
"Gay marriage doesn't offer anything to the homosexual community whatsoever except for legislated acceptance."
Same with straight marriage. Again, it is all feel-good for the insecure.
Kishego| 6.30.11 @ 3:08PM
I think my Son would diagree with you on that one. Two gay men cannot produce one of those.
I guess that's why they are so hell bent on indoctrinating our youth.
M. Thompson| 7.5.11 @ 12:20PM
They are no less hell bent on indoctrinating youth than most Christians. Everyone wants the next generation (as "children are the Future") to subscribe to their own worldview. Get over it.
POST American| 6.30.11 @ 8:15AM
----PLEASE, enough with the coy front op.
FACT IS sodomy, like 'A-bore-shun', 'Adult-ery',
'Divorce' and, begining with the 50's Hollywood
op ---'Forn-IK-A---shun' have, one and all,
been engineered. launched, implemented, promoted, directed etc.
DIRECT from the capstone.
DEPRAVITY, indeed, TOTAL DEPRAVITY,
is the cosmic FACT of human nature at all times
and everywhere. There's NO getting around it.
The capstone creeps well know this.
Whenever they want to take it apart,
since Rome and Greece and, no doubt before,
----wheel in the hedonism, and self-indulgence,
debasement and degadation. It's their 'fave'
formula. Always has been.
Between the Tavistock Institute scripted
Republicans and Democrats, there's NO difference at all. If there were
someone might have taken an absolute stand against any facet of this 'agenda'.
Remember kiddies ---all of it, ALLLL of it, even
the ever available porn, is nothing more than Social Darwinism cunningly aimed against the self----against the very soul.
WE KNOW----------------------------------------------
Alan Brooks| 6.30.11 @ 8:26AM
Dee See (you live in DC, correct?), good to have you back- you make the rest of us appear sane.
Frank Drackman| 6.30.11 @ 8:36AM
Marriage/Schmarriage
as long as they can't donate blood/plasma unless they've been celibate for the last 33 years thats coool with me...
CharlieEcho| 6.30.11 @ 9:50AM
I am totally confused. How many genders are there? Gay/Lesbian/Transgender/Bisexual/Heterosexual/Metro-sexual/Male/Female? I think I'm a Lesbian because I like females and I don't like guys, or is it gays. I guess it's an unnatural phenomenon or a phenomenal mess and complexity.
Radioman777| 6.30.11 @ 10:05AM
Obama supports gay marriage because it's destructive to the social fabric of American society.
Henty Drummond| 6.30.11 @ 10:10AM
What is interesting here is that it is plain the Ancient Romans disapproved of it, and thought it the custom of Greeks and similar weak degenerates
C Smith| 6.30.11 @ 10:15AM
"But, according to Elizabeth Abbott...." But, according to the Lord who spoke all things into existence, gay [sic] marriage isn't entirely new to history. His word records a conflagration in pagan antiquity that could have been a tale of two cities but for a crater that remains the deepest depression on earth:
"And there came two angels to Sodom at even; and Lot sat in the gate of Sodom: and Lot seeing them rose up to meet them; and he bowed himself with his face toward the ground; And he said, Behold now, my lords, turn in, I pray you, into your servant's house, and tarry all night, and wash your feet, and ye shall rise up early, and go on your ways. And they said, Nay; but we will abide in the street all night. And he pressed upon them greatly; and they turned in unto him, and entered into his house; and he made them a feast, and did bake unleavened bread, and they did eat. But before they lay down, the men of the city, even the men of Sodom, compassed the house round, both old and young, all the people from every quarter: And they called unto Lot, and said unto him, Where are the men which came in to thee this night? bring them out unto us, that we may know them. And Lot went out at the door unto them, and shut the door after him, And said, I pray you, brethren, do not so wickedly. Behold now, I have two daughters which have not known man; let me, I pray you, bring them out unto you, and do ye to them as is good in your eyes: only unto these men do nothing; for therefore came they under the shadow of my roof. And they said, Stand back. And they said again, This one fellow came in to sojourn, and he will needs be a judge: now will we deal worse with thee, than with them. And they pressed sore upon the man, even Lot, and came near to break the door. But the men put forth their hand, and pulled Lot into the house to them, and shut to the door. And they smote the men that were at the door of the house with blindness, both small and great: so that they wearied themselves to find the door. And the men said unto Lot, Hast thou here any besides? son in law, and thy sons, and thy daughters, and whatsoever thou hast in the city, bring them out of this place: For we will destroy this place, because the cry of them is waxen great before the face of the LORD; and the LORD hath sent us to destroy it. And Lot went out, and spake unto his sons in law, which married his daughters, and said, Up, get you out of this place; for the LORD will destroy this city. But he seemed as one that mocked unto his sons in law. And when the morning arose, then the angels hastened Lot, saying, Arise, take thy wife, and thy two daughters, which are here; lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city. And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the LORD being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city. And it came to pass, when they had brought them forth abroad, that he said, Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.... Haste thee, escape thither; for I cannot do any thing till thou be come thither.... The sun was risen upon the earth when Lot entered into Zoar. Then the LORD rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the LORD out of heaven; And he overthrew those cities, and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of the cities, and that which grew upon the ground. But his wife looked back from behind him, and she became a pillar of salt. And Abraham gat up early in the morning to the place where he stood before the LORD: And he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace" (Genesis 19:1-28).
cicero| 6.30.11 @ 11:53AM
The sole purpose of the law is to provide equal protection for all. Evrybody has the right to marry, if fthey are of suitable age and lineage. Even gays can marry under existing laws. A gay man can marry any woman he chooses, and a fay woman can marry any man she chooses.
What we are talking about here is same sex partnering. I have no problem with that. Just don't call it marriage. Language counts. Our government is famous for concocting new definitions for old terms. Does anyone remember tha advent of "revenue loss" All at once, we have the government assuming that all wealth (and its markers) belong to the government, and the pitance the earners are allowed to retain is "revenue loss".
Same sex marriage is just such a camel's nose. As in all other things governmental (progressive), follow the money. The plan is to have all of us pick up the tab for irresponsible behavior.
Drunken Sailor| 6.30.11 @ 2:38PM
Bingo, I would give you a cigar, but thanks to Clinton even that has sexual connentations now.
JEarly| 6.30.11 @ 12:34PM
Obama cannot risk supporting Gay Marriage. The 2008 election in California had the largest Black voter turnout in history due to Obama. Also on the ballot was the Proposition 8 Gay Marriage proposal which was soundly defeated largely due to Blacks voting against it.
gary siebel| 6.30.11 @ 3:32PM
It won't do the Repubs any good to stick Obama over gay marriage so long as the Repubs intransigently continue to favor tax breaks for the wealthy.
For now, it's the economy, stupid.
Repubs have completely mishandled the gay marriage issue, anyway, by insisting on arguing it from a religious rather than a secular viewpoint, thereby driving away potential allies.
Marriage is a privilege, not a right. It's as simple as that.
Name one, even one right, that is dependent upon the assent of another person for it to be a right. There aren't any; not even one. But last time I checked, marriage was the result of a request to which another person must accede before it can happen.
weddingdress | 7.1.11 @ 12:34AM
Bingo, I would give you a cigar, but thanks to Clinton even that has sexual connentations now.
john dubose| 7.2.11 @ 8:40AM
It is perfectly OK if any two responsible adults want to shack up and pretend they are married. And it is OK for them to get some civil papers for a contract that is most of the legal equivalent of marriage.
But there aint no such animal as a "gay" marriage.
Jim Hlavac | 7.2.11 @ 10:03PM
Here we go again, you people are silly -- and that my message to the editors here, not the commentators, who are downright repulsive sometimes. But I believe in liberty so strongly I can argue this all the live long day and night.
Here, once again -- gayness is like autism -- a finite small number, some 5% or less of the population is gay -- that's it -- NOT ONE OF YOU WHO IS NOT GAY WILL EVER TURN OR BE GAY -- no one chooses to be gay, it's not a moral issue -- except for you folks whom are so unsure of your own sexuality that you are so fearful that saying one nice thing about us will somehow make you all go kiss a guy. It's delusional. And it's theocracy, which is unAmerican -- and a theocracy assuredly which this country is not. It's a Republic where I'm entitled by my creator to pursue happiness in peace -- and if think your creator didn't create gay folks my creator wants a word with yours. So go deal with your hetero problems -- the divorce, abortion, adultery, and spouse and kid abuse, and the rest of it - and leave us out of it.
Either give us a 100% tax deduction because we're not really people nor citizens, as is so boldly proclaimed - or we're so "Dysfunctional" that we can't fill out the forms, as is oft said (and trust me, we don't need no lessons on how to be gay, it's just that natural to us you apparently have no clue -- and for a bunch of intellectuals I find that astounding. And give us some legal mechanism that is automatic to effect these things which you heteros do without us having to pay extra to hire a lawyer to do it anyway under commercial law or some other means.
How so many rational people at this magazine can become flaming Marxists and lunatics on gays is just simply beside me -- and I've been telling you this for nigh on 30 years. Get a grip people -- we are gay and you are not.
And stop trying to cram you religions down our throats in demands for us to marry you sister whom you don't proffer to us anyway -- in direct contravention to my religious freedom -- and let my people go.
We are the most peaceful productive group of citizens this nation has ever seen -- and we own homes, business and property and pay billions in taxes -- and we do not deserve this constant charade that we are the cause of any hetero problems. But get a grip and stop trying to chase gay voters away.
And who the hell ever heard of a political movement which chases votes away? It's lunacy I tell you, lunacy.
Happy Fourth of July -- and go reread carefully the Declaration of Independence -- which is rather clear in the concept "All men are created equal." And Gays are not excluded from this concept -- unless you are adhering to some old world nonsense we on these shores all escaped -- so go back to Europe, Asia, Africa or wherever your theocracies come from and do your thing there. But I'm an American, and I'm tired of nonsensical stupid discussion about whether I exist and have American rights.
Cheers.
Jim Hlavac | 7.2.11 @ 10:10PM
And cut the crap that we are anti-family -- I'm here at my sister's house, with her husband, my niece, nephew, awaiting my father, and my brothers, aunts uncles, cousins, etc - -how many family members do I (and the rest of the gays in this nation with their families similarly) have to have around me to stop hearing the crap that we're anti-family?
Egad, brilliant on so much you are, and on gays, you are idiots. And I don't like saying that -- but every time I see one of these moronic articles it just makes my blood boil. Now, I shall return to the family gathering I belong in which happens every summer here in the Poconos. Cheers, again, Happy Fourth. And let my people go, and just stop the nonsense and grow up already. You're like spoiled brats arguing over whose ball it is.
Jim Hlavac | 7.2.11 @ 10:19PM
And because I'm not without my humor -- now I need a cocktail, and not necessarily in that order :)
But I'll go post these comments to my blog, to share with my gay friends -- so that they can see I'm the only one who bothers to even try to convince you to be rational about gays. Cheers, and again Happy Fourth!
POST American| 7.3.11 @ 1:51AM
---One and all! get beyond NEO-con-job
tourist class once and for all.
CHECK OUT--
John C. Coleman/Tavistock (5 pts)
on youtube. ESP. pts 3-5.
WOE-------------------------------------------!