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akuma587 on 23 December 2008
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Kasz216 said:
akuma587 said:
Kasz216 said:

I see it as a slap in the face of the gay people who supported him in California.

It was bad enough that Obama's election is what drove the Prop 8 vote over the top...

Obama really owes them if you ask me and should push hard for a gay marriage bill even if he can't get it done.

You forget that Obama explicitly said throughout the campaign that he doesn't support gay marriage.  He is for civil unions, etc.  Though he did say the Prop 8 was a terrible mistake and that it was discriminatory and divisive.

I am in the same boat with you, I am a strong advocate of gay marriage.

But its just too hot of a political football right now for Obama to handle.  And honestly it is the kind of issue that only the Supreme Court could effectively solve anyways.  Once something gains Constitutional protection, it isn't going anywhere.  A statute can be repealed in a heartbeat.  Its about the flimsiest protection you can get.

You yourself however stated that Obama really was for gay marriage and that's just what democrats say to get elected.

If he could get a national law passed for it... it would stay around for a while since it could likely be stalled out.

His first 6 months in office Obama should be able to pass pretty much anything.  Even a gay marriage bill.

I am about 95% confident that Obama is for gay marriage deep down, but he is fairly religious.  Not to mention he is black.  For all I know he actually could be against it and he isn't just lying.

Forcing something like that on the American people would go completely against what Obama ran on though (governing from the middle, and the middle doesn't want gay marriage).  It would also reignite the culture wars and allow the Republicans to tar and feather Obama.

Obama would waste all his political capital and come off as an elitist if he forced a gay marriage bill on the country, or even if he passively let Congress do it.  It would be like dropping an anchor right through the middle of the Democratic Party.

Obama is biding his time and accumulating political capital.  He has successfully moved the country slightly more towards the left (75% of Americans want the government to change the way our healthcare system works, and 87% of the country wants the government to offer more cheap/free healthcare for children).  He is doing what it takes to build a lasting majority (which also means appointing more judges to the Supreme Court). 

I'm not saying it is right to let the Supreme Court take the heat for making a decision like this, but that is really the only way to make something like gay marriage permanent.  If Obama pushed a bill through Congress legalizing gay marriage, what would stop the next Republican congressional majority from repealing it?  And Obama would make it even more likely to happen by wrecking the Democratic Party like that.

Obama is making the right choice to maintain power and to give the American people what they want.  Politics isn't always about doing what is morally "right".  And a majority of Americans don't think gay marriage is morally "right", so its hard to say you have the moral high ground.

You don't have to convince me that gay marriage is something that should be constitutionally protected, but Obama is making the wisest decision he can make.  Reigniting the culture wars would contradict everything he ran on.

 



We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls.  The only thing that really worried me was the ether.  There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke

It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...."  Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson