Again, the dominant position of the Apathy Party rears its butt-ugly head. The people who hate, hate, hate gay equality will vote, they will get to the polls come Hell or high water. Most of us who support gay equality simply accept it as a given, sure, why not? But we are no where near as fired up about it as they are.
Me, I would have crawled on my hands and knees over a hundred yards of broken glass to stop the Forces of Darkness. Now, a hundred and one yards.
As pointed out by others, many of these votes were 8 years ago. Public opinion has changed dramatically since then.
The other point is that right wing single issue voters come out in far greater proportion to their number than the public as a whole. Put an anti-abortion or anti-gay measure on the ballot, and the right wingers will come out of the woodwork and crawl on their bellies over broken glass in the nude to vote for it. More people may be for gay marriage than against it, but the numbers of pro-gay marriage voters for whom it is the primary motivation for getting to the polls is dwarfed by the bigots for whom it is the primary motivation.
[QUOTE=elucidator]
Wouldn’t that make sense? Wouldn’t the degree of wrongness of a discriminatory policy increase with the number of people so discriminated against?
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Wrong is wrong, even it’s just a handful of folks who are being wronged. Sure, from a political perspective the numbers matter, I suppose, but IMHO the ‘wrongness’ isn’t proportional to the number of people being discriminated against, merely the injustice of the discrimination.
-XT
“Merely”? How in the world do you distinguish between “wrongness” and “injustice”?
The Freeptards are overjoyed, BTW. They seem to think Obama has just committed electoral suicide.
Everyone, right and left, always seems to think their own views are more widely popular than they really are.
He’s a black guy with foreign sounding name who managed to wrest control of Democratic nomination from Hilary Clinton, and win the presidency. That sounds to me like somebody who’s at least kinda decent at politics.
[QUOTE=elucidator]
“Merely”? How in the world do you distinguish between “wrongness” and “injustice”?
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Why, I use my handy dandy moral compass thingy, of course. My own compass doesn’t really have a calibration setting for the number of people being screwed over to determine the level of ‘wrongness’ or ‘injustice’, unfortunately…it’s just not set up that way. How do you distinguish between what’s wrong and what’s injustice?
-XT
I don’t get why you think your list of quotes represents pretzel-twisting. Looks to me like he had some youthful idealism, then (once elected) recognized the value of sitting on the fence, and has now decided to pick a side.
If this is pretzel twisting, I guess we can look forward to four more years of barely-bent pretzels.
The Starship Troopers movie was wrong, but not unjust. (I await contrary arguments as to the latter point.)
Thanks for the laughs, I needed it!
Meh, pure Karl Rove tactics - make up a charge, pretend to sincerely believe it, pretend that people who question it are being comically nonsensical, repeat.
Oh, he’s still sitting on that fence…he just threw one leg over but it doesn’t look like he’s ready to jump quite yet.
Finally something Baraxk Obama and Dick Cheney can agree on that doesn’t involve bombing children at funerals.
Fair enough. I just suggest that real “pretzel-twisting” should have some actual twist in it, i.e. Obama saying “I believe X, and always have”, “I believe not-X, and always have”, “I still believe X, but I meant to say that not-X is still my position under the following circumstances” , etc. I’m not seeing any serious contradictions in IntelliQ’s list - the 1996 statement was before he held elected office and could afford to be more idealistic, then 12 years of having to distance himself from gay marriage, then in the last two years edging toward supporting it again as he heads into what will likely be the last election campaign of his life (unless he narrowly loses and pulls a Grover Cleveland in 2016).
I’m willing to cut him some slack since he is coming (belatedly) to the correct conclusion and I don’t recall him ever repeating the blatant lie that hetero (or “traditional”) marriage was in jeopardy.
I always thought he was pretty clear about it. He had reservations about the religious implications of “marriage”. (We may very well overestimate just how “secular” Obama is, he has always identified himself as a religious man, just like everybody else does, its just that he may actually mean it). But he always supported equality, and seemed to be of the opinion that an entirely secular solution was useful, i.e., civil unions. And remember, for quite a while, that was considered a viable option. I think it still is, so long as the legal protections are identical. If two people want a church wedding in addition to their civil union, what’s the problem?
For reasons I don’t quite understand, the argument has moved from that spot. OK, then, so be it. One adjusts, or one does not. People appear to be convinced that even if the actual legal protections are identical, the semantic distinction between “marriage” and “civil union” is, by its very nature, discriminatory and unequal. I don’t quite agree, so long as we are vigilant.
Obviously, we cannot force churches who are unwilling to perform weddings for gay people to do so. And if the distinction between “marriage” and "civil union’ means that much to them, perhaps we can accommodate that.
But if one side refuses to accept a secular compromise due to a semantic issue, and the other side refuses to accept such a compromise for a semantic issue, well, then, we have to ignore the semantics. His call is correct.
I was very happy to hear it. I first heard about the announcement when I got on Facebook yesterday and saw a lot of my friends (both straight and gay) had posted excited updates about it, or saying things about how they’re proud of him. I think this will galvanize a lot of people into volunteering and donating.
I know that the announcement might have scared off some voters in swing states. But it is also six months until the election. I think in six months that at least some of those voters will swing back to Obama. A lot of people might have said “well I’m not voting for him now!” and might have meant it if the election was tomorrow, but will have changed their minds by the time the election comes around.
It’s also interesting that the day after Obama’s announcement supporting gay marriage, that a news story comes out about how Romney bullied gay kids at his prep school, including one kid who had too long blond hair, where
Normally I wouldn’t hold what some did in school 50 years ago against him. Except that this was much more like assault than bullying. And Romney claims he doesn’t remember this incident, but that he did some “hijinks and pranks” in school.
I don’t mean to hijack the thread, but I think the two news stories in two days will highlight some of the differences between Obama and Romney.
Nobody asked me, but when I see right-wingers criticizing Obama on this because his decision could be considered a flip-flop, or it’s timed to take advantage of politics, or he’s just drumming up gay money or he’s insulting people of faith:
or it’s politically expedient:
Really, they’re ignoring the elephant in the room: They don’t like this decision because they don’t like homosexuals, and will not tolerate gay marriage. I just wish more of them would be honest about their position, rather than hide behind all this.
Do they really expect us to believe with their “some of my best friends are gay” apologies that they’d be all for this move if only Obama didn’t get the credit for it? I suppose it’s possible, given the incredible contortions they wen’t thru to find a way to blame him for killing Osama bin Laden, but I just don’t believe it. These clowns have absolutely no shame.
I wonder if anyone will dig into Obama’s college days for a scoop.
I don’t understand why anyone is giving Obama any credit for this at all. He personally supports gay marriage but believes that it’s a state’s rights issue? Might as well not be for it at all then, as far as most of the country is concerned.
I’d get more excited if he supported gay marriage on constitutional grounds and argued that it should be federally recognized. Without federal recognition of same-sex marriage, nothing changes here. It’s annoying. I want to be able to file as married, filing jointly, with my future husband someday, on my federal income tax. Obama doesn’t seem to support that happening, so, I’m not too excited.
I am very happy with him getting rid of DADT though, he gets a lot of credit from me on that.
Been there, done it. There’s a book coming out next month by, I think, a Washington Post reporter. Free tip: no, there’s no bullying of gay kids.