Gay Marriage
He voted for it, before he voted against it, but now he's for it.
Another gift from the president. First it was Joe (The Gaffe) Biden and now the Messiah. Now where do you suppose most Americans are going to stand on this issue? NC just banned same sex marriage the same state holding the DNC. That makes 30 states against it. You just have to wonder about the timing of this announcement. I would like to have been a fly on the wall during the Obama-Biden conversation.
Out of control debt, Keystone, Solyndra, suing states for enforcing illegal immigration policy, Obamacare, etc, and now this. Ya gotta love this guy. Thanks Barry.
Obama Says Same-Sex Marriage Should Be Legal
(aka The Death Nail... so the NYT's had to spin it)
WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday ended nearly two years of "evolving" on the issue of same-sex marriage by publicly endorsing it in a television interview, taking a definitive stand on one of the most contentious and politically charged social issues of the day.
"At a certain point, I've just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married," Mr. Obama told ABC News in an interview that came after the president faced mounting pressure to clarify his position.
In an election that is all but certain to turn on the slowly recovering economy and its persistently high jobless rate, Mr. Obama's stand nonetheless injects a volatile social issue into the campaign debate and puts him at even sharper odds with his presumptive Republican rival, Mitt Romney, who opposes same-sex marriage and favors an amendment to the United States Constitution to forbid it.
Public support for same-sex marriage is growing at a pace that surprises even professional pollsters as older generations of voters who tend to be strongly opposed are supplanted by younger ones who are just as strongly in favor. Same-sex couples are featured in some of the most popular shows on television, without controversy.
Yet time after time, when the issue is put to voters in states, they have chosen to ban unions between people of the same gender or to defeat measures that would legalize same-sex unions. Just Tuesday, North Carolinians voted overwhelmingly to add a ban to their state constitution, and Republican leaders in the Colorado House blocked a vote on legislation to allow civil unions; North Carolina and Colorado are considered swing states in presidential politics.
Nationwide, according to the pollster Andrew Kohut of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, a plurality of swing voters favors same-sex marriage, 47 percent to 39 percent, and outside the South the margin widens to a majority of 53 percent in favor and 35 percent opposed; in the South, a plurality of 48 percent opposes same-sex marriage. Swing voters generally do not have strong opinions on the subject, Mr. Kohut said, though in the South 30 percent of swing voters say they are strongly opposed.
Supporters of same-sex marriage were quick to praise the president's decision to speak out.
"President Obama's words today will be celebrated by generations to come," said Chad Griffin, the incoming president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay advocacy group. "For the millions of young gay and lesbian Americans across this nation, President Obama's words provide genuine hope that they will be the first generation to grow up with the freedom to fully pursue the American dream. Marriage — the promise of love, companionship, and family — is basic to the pursuit of that dream."
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, Democrat of New York, called the president's statement "a watershed moment in American history" that would aid efforts to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act barring federal recognition of same-sex marriage.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York said, "No American president has ever supported a major expansion of civil rights that has not ultimately been adopted by the American people, and I have no doubt that this will be no exception."
Some supporters saw the president's announcement in more political terms.
"For thousands of supporters who donated, canvassed and phone-banked to help elect Barack Obama in 2008, this is a powerful reminder of why we felt so passionately about this president in the first place," said Michael Keegan, president of People for the American Way, a liberal interest group.
"I'm almost in tears," said Steve Clemons, director of the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan research group. Mr. Clemons, who is gay and was married in California in 2008, said the announcement would ignite progressives at a time when there was some ambivalence on the Democratic left as to how forcefully to support Mr. Obama's re-election bid.
Mr. Clemons compared that ambivalence to that of evangelicals on the Republican right toward Mr. Romney. But now, in one single step, Mr. Obama, at least, has erased any ambivalence his base might feel toward his candidacy, Mr. Clemons said.
Mr. Obama's comments came in an interview with ABC News's Robin Roberts that was arranged by the White House, knowing that Ms. Roberts is a popular correspondent, well-known especially among female viewers as a cancer survivor and among African-Americans, a group in which there is widespread opposition to same-sex marriage.
The interview was intended to be wide-ranging, but it inadvertently became the outlet for Mr. Obama's long-awaited evolution on same-sex marriage in a week that began with the remarks of his vice president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., all but embracing same-sex marriage in an expansive answer to a question on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday.
Mr. Biden's well-publicized comments increased the pressure on Mr. Obama to take a stand, with his press secretary, Jay Carney, pummeled with questions from White House reporters. Newspaper editorials, columnists and bloggers assailed the president's ambivalence, demanding clarity before the election. On Tuesday, Mr. Carney signaled that Mr. Obama would soon address the matter.
But the timing was forced on the president in other ways.
Meaning Obama cares about one thing and that's Obama.
On Thursday, Mr. Obama is to attend a fund-raiser in Los Angeles at the home of the actor George Clooney, which is expected to raise about $12 million, much of it from Hollywood people active in the gay-rights cause. On Monday, Mr. Obama is scheduled to speak at a campaign fund-raiser and reception of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Leadership Council in New York City, where the special guest is Ricky Martin, the singer who is gay. On June 6 Mr. Obama is scheduled to return to Los Angeles to speak at a gala benefiting the gay, bisexual and transgender community, with tickets costing up to $25,000. And this summer, Democrats will begin meeting to draft the party's platform for the national convention that will nominate Mr. Obama in September, and some gay-rights activists are pushing to include language endorsing same-sex marriage. The president and his advisers in the White House and at the campaign headquarters in Chicago knew Mr. Obama would repeatedly have to parry questions and criticisms on the issue. That prospect, several Democrats said, suggested that the greater political risk for Mr. Obama was not in coming out for same-sex unions but in appearing to be politically calculating, especially given that most supporters believe he personally has favored same-sex unions.
"He's been on this evolution since November 2010, and it's been getting kind of awkward," said Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign. "The word evolution signifies change that has an ending at some point."
This should insure he "evolves" himself right out of the WH.
Thank you Barry... but we knew it all along
