Perhaps inevitably, President Barack Obama's long-overdue declaration of support for gay marriage is mostly being parsed for signs of what it means for his personal political fortunes and the course of the 2012 campaign. We are a nation addicted to politics. Seemingly everything that happens -- a change in the unemployment rate, the killing of Osama bin-Laden, rumblings of war with Iran -- gets processed through the lens of who won the week in Washington and how the news will play in the discrete worlds of red and blue.
But sometimes the thing is the thing, as is the case with this particular thing.
The president's words of support for the still-controversial notion that men and women in committed same-sex relationships ought to be accorded the same respect and civil rights as everyone else provokes all sorts of questions, some reasonable and some beside the point. How will it affect voters in swing states? Was this another case of Obama's pragmatic calculation, or a real evolution of values? How will African-American voters -- too often reduced to cartoonish one-issue robots, and homophobic ones at that -- react to the news? What happens now in the states, the jurisdictions that predominantly determine the course of liberty for gay Americans?
We can hash all this out, and we ought to, at least on the substantive questions of legality. Obama's words have the force of symbolism alone. They do not change the law or remove the discrimination still confronted by gay people throughout much of life, and most pointedly on the matter of marriage. It is worth pressing the White House for follow-through: Will the president deliver an executive order to require companies receiving federal contracts not to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, as some have urged he should? These are important subjects, and worthy questions.
But years from now, when historians look back at the long arc of American history, they will see in the president's announcement a significant moment. As they trace the social change that -- let us hope -- eventually came to render diversity in sexual orientation as an accepted part of what defines American society, they will absorb Obama's words as a turning point.
The fact that those words came late, after the vice president's and the secretary of education's, and the fact that gay rights advocates were deeply disappointed with this president in the run-up will be mere footnotes. The short-term political context -- concern about the youth vote, balanced against the backlash from socially conservative voters in swing states -- will fade into memory, and then disappear.
This is not to lionize Obama for an act of political courage (though it was that) or to let him off the hook for the ham-handed timing and the obvious political pragmatism that weighed in his deliberations (fair hits). This is to say that the full significance of Obama's words are, in the end, not about Obama or his presidency or the election that consumes an inordinate share of intellectual bandwidth. They are about what sort of country this is, and what sort of country it can yet be, even as we suffer the frustrations and depredations of a messy, maddening style of democracy. This is a case in which the political leadership finally caught up with the country.
The real meaning of Obama's announcement is found not in the evolution of this one man's thinking, but in the evolution of the American character -- which has now taken a significant step forward.
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-- "The thing that every single person DEBATING what President Obama (did!), not what he (SAID), is that all he SAID was:
"I am speaking for my own PERSONAL feelings, thoughts, and "evolution" when I say that I have now come to a point in MY life where I can NOW -- without questioning my Christian FAITH -- now come out PUBLICLY and say what's in my heart..." (paraphrasing)
-- "And, that is I (not my President-persona), but I can endorse the rights of homosexuals to marry, under the law!" ---- That is ALL I heard him say!
AS President he did NOT say he was endorsing or adopting Gay-Marriage as a Federal Public Policy initiative! THAT would be worth all the "debate" and "opposition". Romney promises to "change the U.S. Constitution" against Gay marriage --now THERE'S your debate!
If the late Senator Bird can "EVOLVE" from being a self-proclaimed member of the K-K-K ...to ending his life as a strong proponent for Black civil rights and a friend of Ted Kennedy? The FIRST Black President can surely evolve on Gay marriage without being torn apart!
And exactly how has to changed your life? It hasn't. Your worries about American Identity (whatever that is) are baseless.
1) First black / biracial president
2) Saving the american auto industry
3) Health care reform ( assuming Supreme Court ok's it )
4) Killing Bin Laden and many of his other top Al Queda members
5) Advancing Gay rights
He answered them, "Haven't you read that the one who made them at the beginning 'made them male and female'
God made homosexuality.
Why you are unable to realize that relatively simple fact is beyond me.
"I do not support gay marriage. Marriage has religious and social connotations, and I consider marriage to be between a man and a woman."
Barack Obama, 5/6/2009
I'm looking forward to "Gay Divorce Court". Should be dicey ...
Obama is on the right side, and we do not live in a secular society, we live in society with multiple religions and people without religion that we need to respect. Keep church teaching in the church.