Obama and gay marriage

[Tom_Tildrum]

Remember too that Obama’s circle of religious advisors is almost uniformly opposed to gay marriage.

[furt]

@outlierrn

… I have watched him dance around and dodge, and refuse to defend his statements, and generally argue in a style that seems calculated to irritate everybody.

I’ve not seen him “refuse to defend” things, but maybe I’m missing something. I have seen him outnumbered and having to answer multiple inquisitors, some of who are asking baiting questions like “so you’re saying gays are inferior?”. Ignoring those questions is IMO the best approach. And FWIW, I don’t see his argumentative style as annoying, but again, maybe I’m missing those bits.

[jackdavinci]

(1) what is Obama’s position, truly, way down deep? And could his public statements be parsed in a very Clinton-esque way to support legal gay marriage without being actual lies?

I think he probably doesn’t really personally care one way or the other. His stated position seems to simply be the most politically expedient one. I suspect that he will not make any proactive moves with regard to the issue, but he also won’t stand in it’s way (like a veto).

(2) if Obama supports gay marriage but is lying about it, is he acting immorally, unethically, or in any other way badly?

Not sure. Sometimes political expediency as a means is justified by it’s ends. In the absence of context of course it’s bad, but given the various mitigating factors, it’s at least understandable and perhaps if theoretically bad still pragmatically beneficial. OTOH, ewith regard to Obama specifically, he seems to have well thought out complex views on certain issues, so it’s possible that his stated position is just a ‘cliff notes’ version of his deeper views.

(3) if Obama does in fact “oppose gay marriage”, does he prioritize things civil unions > nothing > gay marriage, like Magellan?

If he does really oppose it, it’s probably more on technical grounds than on moral grounds.

(4) is it a fundamentally reasonable position to say “I disagree with this position that a public figure who I really respect holds… so I’ll just assume he’s lying and doesn’t really hold that position”?

In the absence of other evidence or reasoning it’s just speculation or wishful thinking.

(5) to what extent is it hypocritical for anyone who supports Obama to argue vociferously with Magellan (or others who share his position)?

One can support someone generally without having to support every single one of their positions. It would be very rare for two people to agree on every single issue. It would be hypocritical to support Obama’s personal position on this issue, and argue with Mag, but it wouldn’t necessarily be hypocritical to support Obama’s political stance if one thought it was a matter of political expediency or a long term strategy.

[Shodan]

So, what’s the deal? How do we resolve this apparent contradiction?

IOKIADDI.

There’s nothing more to it than that. It may take a few pages to talk each other into calling it something else, but that’s it.

Regards,
Shodan

[FriarTed]

@Cisco

What does the New Testament say about homosexuality? Presumably almost all Christians disregard the Old Testament seeing as they shave, sleep near women on their period, wear clothes woven of 2 fabrics, etc.

BIG SIGH

Romans 1:26-27 and I Corinthians 6:9-11 are the main passages that have been seen as anti-homosexual activity. Also the OT ban is lumped in with the ban on incest, ritual prostitution, child sacrifice, adultery & bestiality- not the more ritualistic tribal regulations.

Do people really not know this? Disagree with it or argue about the interpretation- that’s fine, but I wish people would stop feigning ignorance that the NT does make statements that can be seen as forbidding gay sex.

[panache45]

@FriarTed

. . . I wish people would stop feigning ignorance that the NT does make statements that can be seen as forbidding gay sex.

BIGGER SIGH

And I wish some people would understand that not everybody has read the NT.

[Der_Trihs]

@FriarTed

BIG SIGH

Romans 1:26-27 and I Corinthians 6:9-11 are the main passages that have been seen as anti-homosexual activity. Also the OT ban is lumped in with the ban on incest, ritual prostitution, child sacrifice, adultery & bestiality- not the more ritualistic tribal regulations.

Do people really not know this?

Nope. I’ve run into Christians quoting passages from the Old Testament before, as claims that the New Testament condemns gays.

[Gyrate]

@Shodan

IOKIADDI.

There’s nothing more to it than that. It may take a few pages to talk each other into calling it something else, but that’s it.

Regards,
Shodan

If you’re just going to dismiss what everyone writes, why even bother to contribute?

My take on things: I don’t know what Obama really thinks. I’m not a mindreader. From his words and actions I could easily see any of the following being true:

1. He personally opposes gay marriage and will waffle and stonewall until the end of his term(s) to avoid doing anything about it, citing other priorities;

2. He personally opposes gay marriage but will promote it if it becomes in his political interest;

3. He personally opposes gay marriage but will follow through on his promises to repeal DADT etc when doing so won’t negatively impact on other parts of his agenda (which means it would be quite far down his laundry list).

4. He’s ambivalent on gay marriage but claims to oppose it because most Americans currently do.

All of those options disappoint me but my money’s on #2 in terms of how it will play out, and I don’t really believe #4 is likely.

So no, I don’t give Obama a pass for his stance on gay marriage, and it’s not okay even IADDI (in fact, it’s less okay IADDI, in my view). But as I feel his overall agenda is moving the country in a positive direction I continue to be generally supportive even when certain specific things he says or does (or, in this case, doesn’t do) really tick me off.

Which is more than I can say for how I feel about many of the things Magellan writes.

[tomndebb]

TWEEEEEEET!

This thread has enough potential to keep a lively discussion going, so I am not going to close it.

However,
While it might have been necessary to mention magellan01’s (perceived) positions on the various related issues, here, he dd not actually open the thread and he has not (yet) participated in it. Discussions of his tactics or presentation have no bearing on the discussion and you will kindly drop them from any further posts.

Similarly, sideways shots at Shodan or similar remarks about other posters serve no purpose and have no business in this thread.

Having been provided the starting point of a comparison of the perceived positions of the president and magellan01, for the rest of the thread, simply stick to discussing those positions without dragging in any more personal stuff.

[ /Moderating ]

[jayjay]

@panache45

BIGGER SIGH

And I wish some people would understand that not everybody has read the NT.

AND that some people don’t really give a damn what it says. I don’t know why people try to trip up anti-gay Christians on this. Their belief in the position vis a vis gay rights doesn’t come from reason, so trying to trip them up with logic isn’t going to work.

Frankly, I think the Bible (and the Koran, and the Torah, and the Book of Mormon, etc) is absolutely irrelevant to an issue of US law. Convincing anti-gay Christians that their book doesn’t say what they think it says about homosexuality won’t convince them of anything.

[Gyrate]

@tomndebb

Having been provided the starting point of a comparison of the perceived positions of the president and magellan01, for the rest of the thread, simply stick to discussing those positions without dragging in any more personal stuff.

Heard and understood.

[Cisco]

@panache45

BIGGER SIGH

And I wish some people would understand that not everybody has read the NT.

I’ve actually read it. Forgive me, Friar, if I didn’t remember ~5 practically throw away passages out of a few thousand. I do recall reading about those specific verses a few years ago online. It’s quite a stretch if you ask me. If you want to use the bible as a discriminatory book, you can use it to discriminate against a lot more than gay people. Women and followers of every other (and no) religion would be a lot higher on the list, off the top of my head. But I thought Jesus’ underlying message of unconditional love was more important than all that. Guess not. Gotcha.

[rivulus]

(1) what is Obama’s position, truly, way down deep? And could his public statements be parsed in a very Clinton-esque way to support legal gay marriage without being actual lies?

No way of telling. But I can speculate. I think that he has been giving just enough lip service to the gay community to keep them voting and fundraising for him, while allowing those in his circle to undermine the gay marriage movement when possible to satisfy his socially-conservative religious advisors, and voters with similar opinions. Case in point, the brief submitted on Friday (nicely circumventing the news cycle while also coinciding with the anniversary of Loving v. Virginia) by the DOJ in defense of DOMA. It is reviewed in detail at this blog.

There are several ways in which this brief is a direct slap in the face to the gay community:
[ol]
[li]It states that gays have no constitutional right to marriage, or recognition of their marriages by other states[/li][li]It says that gays can get marriage rights, as long as they marry someone of the opposite sex![/li][li]It argues that you can’t compare same-sex marriages to interracial marriages (as in Loving v. Virginia)[/li][li]It argues that gays don’t deserve same scrutiny in court that other minorities get[/li][li]It invokes cases about incest and child marriages (what? no pedophilia? bestiality? I think they forgot something!)[/li][li]It argues that DOMA saves the federal treasury money :rolleyes:[/li][/ol]

Basically, the issue is this: while the DOJ has the responsibility to defend the constitutionality of existing laws, this brief goes above and beyond the call of duty to state its case. From this blog:

Even if one argues, as I often have, that a government lawyer — from the Department of Justice to state attorneys general — must defend even those laws with which one disagrees*, such a lawyer needn’t overstate his or her case. The government lawyer defending a statute with which she disagrees needn’t add gratuitous demeaning statements into the legal brief she files… Even if one accepts that DOJ should have filed a brief opposing this case (and the facts do suggest some legitimate questions about standing), the gratuitous language used throughout the filing goes much further than was necessary to make its case.

Leading gay groups agree with this assessment in a joint statement:

When President Obama was courting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender voters, he said that he believed that DOMA should be repealed. We ask him to live up to his emphatic campaign promises, to stop making false and damaging legal arguments, and immediately to introduce a bill to repeal DOMA and ensure that every married couple in America has the same access to federal protections.

Signed,

ACLU
GLAD
Lambda Legal
NCLR
HRC
NGLTF

Bolding mine.

Now, while one of the authors of the brief is a Mormon Bush holdover at the DOJ, the lead author is Tony West (scroll down for the update). This isn’t some Republican leftover operating off in a corner of the DOJ writing this stuff. This is one of Obama’s righthand men.

Tony West, the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Division, is the senior person on the brief. [snip] He also was the co-chairman of Obama’s fundraising committee. This is an Obama person. And his name is on this brief.

Anyway, back to the second question:

(2) if Obama supports gay marriage but is lying about it, is he acting immorally, unethically, or in any other way badly?

I think that the opposite is true. He has hinted that he supports gay marriage, but actually does not. Taking gays for a ride while they gave him money and spent time campaigning for him. And, yeah, I think it’s unethical and immoral. I don’t know how to answer the remaining questions. But I do think the man speaks out of both sides of his mouth on this issue.

[Miller]

@furt

I do think it speaks very ill of people who insult magellan for his opinion and yet give Obama a pass. AFAIK he’s always been polite about expressing his views, and in the face of some pretty nasty insults. If you’re going to call him a bigot or a homophobe for his position, it’s pretty obvious you have to apply that to Obama and his identical-as-far-as-he’s-explained-it opinion.

I do think that, on this issue, Obama is a bigot. Or, at best, he supports bigoted policies out of political expediency, which is not a significant difference from simply being a bigot, in my book. The thing is, being a bigot isn’t the be-all and end-all determinator of someone’s worth as a person. Obama’s position on gay rights is a moral failing. That doesn’t make him a moral failure. And as compared to the nation as a whole, Obama is significantly less bigoted than the average American on this subject.

And I’ve been saying exactly the same thing about magellan for years now.

[Rhythmdvl]

Update per Huff Post:

The Obama administration filed court papers Monday claiming a federal marriage law discriminates against gays, even as government lawyers continued to defend it.

[However,] Justice Department lawyers are [also] seeking to dismiss a suit brought by a gay California couple challenging the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act. The administration’s response to the case has angered gay activists who see it as backtracking on campaign promises made by Barack Obama last year.

In court papers, the administration said it supports repeal of the law.

Yet the same filing says the Justice Department will defend the statute in this case because a reasonable argument can be made that the law is constitutional.
…

“The administration believes the Defense of Marriage Act is discriminatory and should be repealed,” said Justice Department spokeswoman Tracy Schmaler, because it prevents equal rights and benefits.

The department is obligated “to defend federal statutes when they are challenged in court. The Justice Department cannot pick and choose which federal laws it will defend based on any one administration’s policy preferences,” Schmaler added.

…

“The United States does not believe that DOMA is rationally related to any legitimate government interests in procreation and child-rearing and is therefore not relying upon any such interests to defend DOMA’s constitutionality,” lawyers argued in the filing.

[Gyrate]

I can’t decide whether that’s fair and balanced or just really quite horrible. Or maybe both.

[Gangster_Octopus]

Yeah, that’s a real WTF.

[Magiver]

So just to be clear, one of the argument is that words don’t mean things regarding the position of the current President? He lied to get elected because everything is fair in love and politics? Am I fair in this assessment?

If he’s not lying, then he believes a marriage is an institution defined as the bond between one man and one woman. Allowing for a civil union is not a function of separate but equal but an acknowledgment that words do in fact, mean things. Marriage may have formed out of social/religious dogma into legal codification but it’s meaning still clearly defines the relationship. Changing it to mean other types of relationships dilutes the meaning of the word. It parallels the use of the word “gay” to mean anything sexually different as in the phrase “that’s so gay”.

[YogSothoth]

Seems like Obama wants to repeal the horrible discriminatory laws, but on his own time table. We’ve already seen what would happen if the right wing gets an issue and runs with it.

[flickster]

Or he’s just trying to solidify his political base as best he can. Knowing that he has lost a good % if the independents over the past couple of months (as reflected in recent polls).