The extensive media coverage and pundit commentary about President Obama's public support for same sex marriage as an "equal right" for all in our nation, irrespective of gender, challenges the wisdom of offering further comment. We nevertheless offer our thoughts on the matter.
Last week, I first heard the news reports of the president's comments on same sex marriage while visiting Washington, DC. After actually watching and listening to his remarks during the interview at the White House conducted by ABC News' Robin Roberts, President Obama's comments provoked immediate thoughts about other related, as well as disparate, things; such as:
Most of the media and political commentators have framed President Obama's support for same sex marriage in terms of equality before and under our laws. This is short sighted and fails to recognize a more fundamental issue at play here.
Same sex marriage is not only about "equal rights" to marry whomever you wish in America. The rights underlying same sex marriage are fundamental -- and more importantly, they're about the power of love, the enduring power of love. It's about elementary fairness and decency in a democratic society. It's about the application of the age old "golden rule": treat others the way in which we want to be treated in turn.
A corollary to this in political leadership is that political leaders should love the people they serve. I am not talking about "romantic relationship" love. I am talking about the ethical basis for "loving" people different or engaged in a lifestyle different than that which political leaders have acknowledged or addressed in the past.
A just society neither encourages, discourages nor prohibits same sex marriage. Classic "libertarian conservatism" logically suggests that government should refrain from interfering or dictating who or what kind of person in our nation is qualified to give or receive love from another person in society.
President Obama recognized that we have moved beyond the 20th century issue of "what is the color of love" to the 21st century question of what is the gender of love. The president, like great leaders before him, appears to be reaching up to the moral arc of the universe to assure that it continues to bend toward justice. As such, he is leaving a legacy in which government does not dictate, proscribe or determine that same sex love, commitment and/or marriage is not entitled to the same respect and equal legal protections in our nation as opposite sex love, commitment and/or marriage.
Historians may argue that President Obama's speech in Grant Park, Chicago, as president-elect, on November 5, 2008 was his most important speech. Others might point to his acceptance speech on receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo or his speech on race, "A More Perfect Union," March 18, 2008 in Philadelphia when his candidacy was threatened by his relationship with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of the church he attended in Chicago. I believe, however, that Obama words affirming same sex marriage will be cited by historians as seminal and defining of his presidency:
"I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same sex relationships, who are raising kids together; when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that 'don't ask, don't tell' is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, 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."
Those simple words are President Obama's updated 21st century version of Dr. King's prophetic view and hope for America expressed in his 1963 " I Have a Dream" Speech.
At that time, Dr King said:
"I have a dream one day... when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, 'My country, 'tis of thee, and sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.'"
"And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
President Obama has made it clear that the right for gay/lesbian, bisexual and transgender people to marry the person they love enables them to be finally "free at last" -- to be included in the Dream that Dr. King had for America.
To preempt any criticism that I am suggesting that Dr. King would have favored same sex marriage, this is not what I am saying. I am saying, without fear of contradiction, that Dr. King believed in and was committed to the enduring power of love as expressed in 1 Corinthians 13:4-8:
"Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things. Love never ends. Prophecies will pass away; tongues will cease; and knowledge, will pass away."
Same sex marriage is ultimately and fundamentally about love; love of one human being for another.
Accordingly, for those religious evangelicals and others in our country opposed to same sex marriage and full equal rights for gay people in our society, the question they must pause and consider is my belief, unrelated to the views of President Obama, that God must really love gay people. Otherwise, why would he continue to create so many of them?
These issues transcend the question of whether or not President Obama publicly affirmed same sex marriage as an act of "political expediency" to gain votes. No one has ever claimed President Obama to be a "dumb" or "stupid" political leader. He can read and count just like any other politician. With 32 states having laws or amendments to their constitutions defining marriage to be between only a man and a woman, it is not likely that President Obama looked at announcing his support for same sex marriage as an act primarily of political expediency to gain votes during a national presidential election year. Like other great political statesmen before him President Obama understands that nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. This is not political expediency. This is political astuteness and an acknowledgement of current political reality.
Menachem Rosensaft: The Case for Same-Sex Marriage: Striving for the Moral Absolute of Equality
Was merely being factual as to what immediately came to mind after I heard President Obama affirm the legal validity of same sex marriage.
Thank you for you comment
Dr. Jones
Many thanks for the quick response and explanation. I really appreciate your candor and personal observations. I am sure that MLK is smiling down at you and saying Amen. Perhaps in time more people will understand Obama's bravery and character. At the moment we (partner and I) are composing a letter to all of our family and friends to take a moment to consider Obama's bravery and what it means to us and to support us at the ballot box this fall. Some will find it distateful and others will have already reached that point. We want all of them to know that when they mark that box in November that who they vote for will have a huge impact on us.
If you must, at least have the decency to quality your statements - something like "according to Christians who believe as I do......" would be honest. Your all-inclusive statements about Christianity are not. They are bearing false witness against me and many, many others. I do not appreciate it. You owe us an apology for lying about us and our Christian beliefs.
"We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny. I can never be what I ought to be until you are allowed to be what you ought to be. I've always felt that homophobic attitudes and policies were unjust and unworthy of a free society and must be opposed by all Americans who believe in democracy.
"Gays and lesbians stood up for civil rights in Montgomery, Selma, in Albany, Ga. and St. Augustine, Fla., and many other campaigns of the Civil Rights Movement. Many of these courageous men and women were fighting for my freedom at a time when they could find few voices for their own, and I salute their contributions.
"Freedom from discrimination based on sexual orientation is surely a fundamental human right in any great democracy, as much as freedom from racial, religious, gender, or ethnic discrimination."
We *are* all together in this fight against discrimination. It's our job to leave this planet better than we found it.
Came here to say thanks for faving a comment of mine.My reward... reading this post. She was quite a woman!.
Lincoln was not a champion of equality or even citizenship for blacks when he ran for the presidency, nor for the first couple of years in office. But once blacks were allowed a combat role in the US Army, and had spilled their blood as black men for the cause of our union, Lincoln's views on these matters changed, and by war's end, he advocated full equality and citizenship, first for for blacks who had served in the military, but rapidly after, for all black Americans.
Now that gays can serve openly as gays in the military during our present "long war" era, it is only a matter of time before full equality in all aspects of society and its institutions will follow, as civil rights for blacks was, in the postwar 20th century, brought back front and center to general American consciousness when Truman announced the end of segregation in the armed forces in the late '40's.
As in the civil rights era, there will be, as there have been, especially around the heated issue of marriage, pushbacks and attempts to further legalize inequality in some places, for some time. But they will ultimately fail.
IMHO, the right of the people to peaceably to assemble includes the right not only to gather together to express their opinions but also to gather together as a family. The state of North Carolina recently passed a law banning same-serx marriages. I expect that law to be struck down by the U. S. Supreme Court based on the peacerably assembly clause.
http://www.spnheadlines.com/2010/01/furor-erupts-over-obama-remark-on-gays_27.html