President Obama thundered to the throngs at the recent LGBT Leadership Council fund raising bash in New York, "I believe that gay couples deserve the same legal rights as every couple in the country." This was not hyperbole that he had to shout to one of the country's most prominent, and influential gay rights groups to get gay activists off his back about his opposition to gay marriage. Despite the withering heat he has taken for that opposition, Obama has been the best friend that gays have ever had in the White House.
He backed gay rights in speeches and legislation more than a dozen times as an Illinois state legislator and U.S. Senator. The record number of gay appointments, and the speed with which he's made them, were just the extension of his personal and political conviction that discrimination against gays is every bit the civil rights issue that discrimination against women and minorities is. He issued executive orders mandating that hospitals treat gay and lesbian couples the same as heterosexual ones, and at the same time expand rights for gay couples who work in the federal government. He vigorously opposed Proposition 8, the California initiative that would have effectively banned gay marriage. He reversed his position on the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and calls it abhorrent.
But he won't take the final step and flatly say: 'I support gay marriage and will back every effort in every state to pass a gay marriage law'. This refusal mystifies, rankles and angers gay rights organizations and is the single biggest stumbling block to them giving Obama their full backing. Obama may in time back gay marriage, he's said his position is "evolving" but it's not going to happen just yet.
This would require Obama to reverse not only his political thinking, but his fundamental and personal beliefs. He made that perfectly clear in a blog talk last October when he flatly said he wouldn't sign on to same sex marriage because of his "understandings" of what traditional marriage should be. That's the decades old unambiguous and universally consecrated notion that marriage is and should only be between a man and a woman. That's not just antiquated, bigoted, and a rapidly discredited understanding that Obama refers too, it's one he's still stuck on.
Obama is no different than many other fiercely liberal, tolerant and broad minded African-Americans on diversity issues. But he, like many others, still can draw the line on gay marriage and that's fueled by deeply ingrained notions of family, church, and community, and the need to defend the terribly frayed and fragmented black family structure. This mix of fear, belief, and traditional family protectionism has long been a staple among many blacks and virtually every time the issue of legalizing gay marriage has been put to the ballot, or initiative, or a legal challenge, or just simply the topic of public debate there has been no shortage of black ministers and public figures willing to rush to the defense of traditional marriage.
The warning signs that many blacks were susceptible to religious and conservative pitches to oppose gay marriage lit up in 1997. Then the late Green Bay Packers perennial all-pro defensive end Reggie White, an ordained fundamentalist minister, stirred a firestorm when he took a huge swipe at gay rights and gay marriage in a speech to the Wisconsin state legislature. White became the first celebrity black evangelical to say publicly what many black religious leaders said and believed privately about gay issues. Few blacks joined in the loud chorus that condemned his remarks.
A year before White's outburst, a Pew poll measured black attitudes toward gay marriage and found that blacks by an overwhelming margin opposed it. A CNN poll eight years later showed that anti-gay attitudes among blacks had softened at least publicly among many blacks. But the line continued to be just as firmly drawn on same sex marriage. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life in polls in 2009 and 2010 found that blacks opposed same sex marriage by gaping margins over whites or Hispanics. The finding was even more striking in that Pew also found that for the first time in the decade and half that it had been polling Americans on attitudes toward gay rights, and that includes gay marriage, that less than half of Americans opposed same sex marriage.
It's wrongheaded and wildly inaccurate to think that President Obama opposes same sex marriage out of narrow religious belief, conservative family upbringing, or a racial herd mentality that is unyielding on the traditional defense of family values. But it's just as wrongheaded to say that none of these things have and do weigh in the president's unwillingness to take the final step and say yes to gay marriage. Time will tell when he will finally change, but that time hasn't come yet and there are reasons why.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. He is an associate editor of New America Media. He is host of the weekly Hutchinson Report Newsmaker Hour on KTYM Radio Los Angeles streamed on ktym.com podcast on blogtalkradio.com and internet TV broadcast on thehutchinsonreportnews.com
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: www.twitter.com/earlhutchinson
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It really is that simple
Any other explanation is simply speculation
It is rather ironic that Obama uses the same argument for gay marriage. He is sideing with people who are against his very existence as a bi-racial american
"But he won't take the final step and flatly say: 'I support gay marriage and will back every effort in every state to pass a gay marriage law'. This refusal mystifies, rankles and angers gay rights organizations and is the single biggest stumbling block to them giving Obama their full backing. Obama may in time back gay marriage, he's said his position is "evolving" but it's not going to happen just yet."
But you are 100 percent wrong on this account. Illinois State Senate Candidate Obama said those exact words in TWO seperate 1996 questionaires, and THAT is why we in the gay community are upset with him. He went from a PUBLICLY held and stated commitment to Same Sex marriage Rights to a "God is in the mix" position to this now "evolving" position. I'm not mad because he won't say it, I'm mad that he said it and took it back but only took it back when it was politically expedient in his run for President. You need to present the entire set of facts instead of half the story. If the majority knew he had been for those rights, until it was a detriment to his Presidential aspirations, they would understaqnd the anger that is justifiable. Many people EVOLVE on marriage equality, but very few devolve only to evolve again later.
Or was the President lying to get votes?
What a load of waffle. "It's dumb to say Obama's opinion is based on things A, B, or C, but all three are part of his opinion." Say something meaningful, please.
Obama's reasons are his alone.
Whatever psychosis he has on this subject is his.
The test here is whether the President is helping to achieve equality of rights for all citizens.
He isn't.
It is that simple.
Outcomes matter.
Empty talk doesn't.
I am not a lawyer and maybe I am off base but one would think if the courts deem DOMA unconstitutional federally, wouldn’t the states have to comply?
To be brutally frank about this, our president will announce his support for marriage equality between his reelection and his second inauguration, and his second inaugural address will be all about equal protection under law. Nothing if not consummately political, and that's the reason, and you didn't need to expend all those words hinting at it.
As far as job creation, I had a little hope after the midterms that Congress would get down to business and focus on those concerns. That lasted right up until the new Republican House majority decided that Planned Parenthood and NPR were their greatest enemies, and failed to announce a plan to create jobs besides continuing to cut taxes on millionaires at the expense of programs for middle- and working-class Americans or even, God forbid, actually reducing the deficit in a real way.
If Paul Ryan had advanced a plan to dismantle Medicare without including large tax breaks for the wealthy, I'd believe he was at least serious about deficit reduction. But the evidence that giving more money to rich people fuels anything in the 21st century aside from offshore jobs and speculative bubbles just isn't there, and Republicans refuse to consider trying to create jobs any other way. They came into power promising a laserlike focus on job creation, and I have yet to see it.
Outcomes do matter.
Unless they don't.
On this point, for unknown reasons, outcomes don't seem to matter.
I would not describe his opposition as vigorous, more like tepid. He won California and if his supporters had voter no to Prop 8 it would never have passed. He hardly mentioned it and many of his supporters voted for the ban.
As far as why people have such a hard time accepting gay marriage I think it comes down to our base childish instincts. Much as a child doesn't want to play with a toy until someone else is playing with it, many people don't put any thought into marriage (look at the prevalence of divorce and adultery) until someone else wants the same rights. Then suddenly they become the epic protector of the sanctity of marriage.
So no I won't let the President slide on this because he's not able to think through this logically like the majority. That's like saying someone's a racist because his parents were, it's not a valid reason for stupidity.
Give me a break.
I would also remind you that a marriage license is issued by the governing body responsible, be it the county clerk, city clerk, NOT the church. The church can do all the praying, waving of incense, hocus/pocus, whatever they wish to do but the wedding ceremony has absolutely NOTHING to do with the legality of a marriage.
"Just look at the nations in which it has been legalized." What's your point??
1. "I fully support same-sex marriage."
followed by:
2. "I am not seeking re-election." Because after making that first statement, there is no way in hell he would win a second term. Kiss the swing states goodbye. Then we call enjoy life under a Republican president, who will have the opportunity to appoint at least 2 members of the Supreme Court.
Would that make you happy?
He has the right to think whatever he wants. He can think deep in his heart that we are going to burn for eternity. It wouldn't break my heart or make me lose the will to live. But I don't have to agree with it, accept it or condone it.
That is my whole point with nothing hidden between the lines that you need to say for me. Thanks for attempting to finish my sentences though. It lets me know you care.
I don't care if the president dislikes full on equality for marriage. Lincoln is not remembered for saying:
"I have no purpose directly or indirectly to interfere with the institution of slavery in the states where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so".
Lincoln is not remembered for being a bigot who thought the best way to deal with "Negros" was to send them to Madagascar. Lincoln is remembered for freeing the slaves at great cost.
Obama is just like Lincoln but the one who allowed Slave owning States to fight for the Union during Civil War. Or the one who did not go further than the first partial emancipation. Lincoln never thought "Negros" were equal but his actions led to real emancipation 100 years later.
Obama sees nothing worth fighting for save the rich and the powerful. The reason he hedges his bets is because Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals and inter gender Americans are a powerful economic and voting bloc. Obama is a man with no soul, in all use of the word.
The president who signs a Federal statute or amendment for Gay Marriage will be a true friend.