An astonishing discovery was revealed to the Obama administration this week: gays, too, like the government to leave them alone.
The president sat down for the interview on Wednesday, at which time he announced his support for gay marriage. He concluded, "...it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married."
I agree, but I'll get to that soon.
It's difficult to ignore the obscene politicization of the event. Andrew Romano, a senior writer for the Daily Beast, spoke with the Obama campaign and learned a few things about the creepy amount of time and effort that went into this presentation of a relatively common belief. It's a perfect depiction of the modern step-on-no-one's-feet aspect of American political life.
Romano explains that the campaign's official decision to come out in favor of gay marriage was made a year ago but that they wanted to wait until election time in order to energize liberal voters. Seeing as how a single Huffington Post article on Obama's stance has over 400,000 Facebook "likes" on it, I'd say the plan worked.
It wasn't easy, though.
First a test runner was required in order to get a sense of public opinion for high-ranking officials taking a strong stance on the matter. Thus Joe Biden scheduled an interview with Meet the Press and said that he's "absolutely comfortable" with men marrying men, women marrying women, et cetera. Most outlets claim that Biden's comments were spur-of-the-moment and that he later apologized to the president for the outburst, but the narrative doesn't follow. After an entire year of intentional silence, we're supposed to believe that Biden magically forgot to keep his mouth closed during a planned interview?
And then Arne Duncan conveniently did the same exact thing the next day (during an interview about tuition costs, all the more). Why would anyone be asking the Secretary of Education about his opinion on gay marriage except for the sole purpose of further propelling the topic into the national sphere?
Of course these placeholders may have not even been necessary for the administration considering the recent passage of North Carolina's "Amendment 1," which amends the state constitution to limit the recognition of certain domestic unions. It's worth noting how barely anyone noticed that North Carolina state law already defines marriage as between one man and one woman, but nonetheless the post-passage uproar was incredibly loud, indicating in general terms that the opposition was angrier about the legislation passing than supporters would have been if the legislation had not passed.
This newly-created public opinion set the stage for the president's grand finale. On May 9th, campaign officials quickly decided it was go-time since, you know, they were prepared well in advance. Their choice was ABC's Robin Roberts.
The reasons behind this choice should come as no surprise. Roberts herself is no stranger to participating in glorification of politicians, and her relationship with the Obama family is certainly no exception. Indeed she hosted the first conversation with the president after his 2009 inauguration. She interviewed him one year ago, too, about how great of a father he is, how Republicans are too mean, and -- after picking from a pool of viewers' most important questions -- how he deals with his teenager daughters going on dates.
One producer at ABC told Politico that the Obama administration had specifically tapped Roberts for this loyal friendship -- it pays to worship government -- coupled with the fact that she's black. Another ABC executive pointed out to Gawker that most television insiders understand she was also chosen for the near-open secret that she's allegedly a lesbian.
Can you imagine the outrage that would follow if someone like Ron Paul had chosen to do an interview with someone who is specifically a white, conservative, Christian male?
And the presidential fandom continued when Roberts commented on how she's been getting chills ever since Obama's not-so-monumental answer (though, admittedly, I'd prefer Roberts' chills to the "tingles" crawling up Chris Matthews' leg). I almost feel bad letting her know that the only thing forcing Obama's change in tune is cold hard cash, as it should be. James Taranto wrote an excellent piece at the Wall Street Journal detailing how campaign donations from the gay community were drying up; this "evolution" merely refreshed the parched mouths of sleeping donors who were subsequently happy enough to provide the campaign with millions and millions of dollars.
Big money ain't a problem for lefties when it heads in their direction.
In my view, the worst thing about all of this -- the political test-runs, the creepy statements and the emptying of wallets -- is that it's for nothing. Maybe my generation's anti-gay community has just learned to zip its lips in public, but I didn't even realize this was still a debate. I don't know anyone who really cares about what people do in their bedrooms. Equality under the law is all that should be asked.
The libertarian solution to this entire problem is common sense: get the government out of marriage completely -- no official recognition of any kind of relationship, no legal privileges given to some groups and not others, and finally, for an easy transition into the old government-free way of classic American life, a general decrease in income tax rates in order to offset those which were previously given to traditional families only.
We cultural conservatives don't need to save marriage. It's only when pseudo-conservatives try to protect marriage with legislation that it's ruined by means of the same hammer. Marriage will save itself without any direct action on our behalf.
And that's the beginning and end of everything we need to know.