President Obama may be playing coy on his official position concerning homosexual marriage, famously declaring that his opinion on the subject is “evolving.” However, the President knows that the homosexual community nationwide will be key to his reelection efforts, so on the eve of New York’s legalization of same-sex marriage, Mr. Obama could be found at a $1,250-a-plate Manhattan fundraiser sponsored by the Democratic National Committee, telling “gay” doctors, lawyers, financial experts, media moguls, and such that if they help him win another four years in the White House (as they clearly did in 2008 when he garnered some 70 percent of their vote), “we will write another chapter” in the re-definition of American culture.
Mr. Obama told the crowd on June 23 that “ever since I have a memory about what my mother taught me and my grandparents taught me, I believed that discrimination because of somebody’s sexual orientation or gender identity ran counter to who we are as a people, and it’s a violation of the basic tenets on which this nation was founded.” He went as far as to say he believed that “gay couples deserve the same legal rights as every other couple in this country.”
While that subtle hint at an endorsement of “gay” marriage didn’t quite satisfy some of the more militant homosexual activists in the crowd, the President went on to assure them that that he has long believed “that the so-called Defense of Marriage Act ought to be repealed. It was wrong. It was unfair. And since I taught constitutional law for a while, I felt like I was in a pretty good position to agree with courts that have ruled that Section 3 of DOMA violates the Constitution. And that’s why we decided, with my attorney general, that we could no longer defend the constitutionality of DOMA in the courts. Now, part of the reason that DOMA doesn’t make sense is that traditionally marriage has been decided by the states.”
Mr. Obama’s last statement was significant, because it revealed either a lack of understanding of the law (highly unlikely), or an effort to deceive and manipulate the law and process for a political purpose (more likely).
Michael Foust of Baptist Press News noted that that the President’s posture on DOMA “has long frustrated conservatives, partially because DOMA has long been seen as a law protecting states’ rights.” Foust pointed out that while DOMA’s section 3 does focus on the federal government, defining marriage for federal purposes as only between a man and a woman, “the other major section of the law is aimed at the states by giving them the option of not recognizing another state’s ‘gay marriages.’”
It was DOMA, recalled Foust, that “led dozens of states to pass laws and constitutional amendments defining marriage in the traditional sense.” The president appears to be dipping into deception in his focus on the federal section of DOMA, because he “opposes the entire law, and not just Section 3,” noted Foust.
Byron Babione, an attorney with the Alliance Defense Fund, goes as far as calling Mr. Obama’s position on DOMA “nonsense,” pointing out that it ignores the fact that the law was designed to protect states’ rights and give them leeway to “determine social policy with respect to marriage.” Babione told Baptist Press News that the federal law “allows states the freedom to protect marriage between a man and a woman and not to have the same-sex marriages of other states imposed upon them….”
Overturning DOMA, as Mr. Obama is trying to do, would actually be detrimental to states’ rights, said Babione, and would also “do untold damage to the benefits that marriage brings to society. It would open the way to defining marriage and its value out of existence.”
While the President’s words and actions on homosexual issues over the past several months seem to indicate that he would like the political benefit of openly endorsing same-sex marriage, Politico.com’s White House reporter Julie Mason told CBS News that he “doesn’t want to alienate some moderates who are not really comfortable with the president taking that strong a stand on gay marriage. So it’s a bit of a political calculation.” Added Mason by way of personal observation, “Also, I’m just not sure he personally believes it. He has never indicated that [he does].”
Nonetheless, Jacob Bernstein of the Daily Beast noted, even though the President has not come out verbally in favor of same-sex marriage, he is the first President who has aggressively used his position to further the homosexual agenda. “You know, he struck down the Defense of Marriage Act [or at least is trying], he’s repealed ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,’ he signed major anti-hate crimes legislation,” Bernstein told CBS News. “So you know, he has done a large amount and he supports everything but calling it marriage. You know, he says that gay couples should have the same rights.”
Charlie Butts of the conservative news site OneNewsNow.com wrote that with Mr. Obama’s appearance at the homosexual fundraiser in New York, the legalization of same-sex marriage in that state, and the fact that the President earlier proclaimed June as “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month,” there is “serious speculation that the president will officially support same-gender marriage by the end of June….”
Matt Barber of the pro-family group Liberty Counsel told Butts that the President “cannot afford to lose the homosexual activist community, which is very angry at him right now because he is not meeting their demands fast enough,” in spite of the fact that “he’s done more to damage legitimate marriage and the natural family than any president in history.”
