I personally played a part in forcing Obama's hand on this issue. I pushed the shaming process further. He caved.
Let's not kid ourselves here Mark. You can support the president and/or support him on this issue (one can agree with his new position on gay marriage but not support him overall!) and still be honest about the fact that this is not about him evolving, it's about him having the political sack to say something he didn't have the sack to say back then.
Don't you know? If you ever change your mind on a perspective, that makes you a bad person. Real Americans believe something and stick with it no matter what the facts say.
This was a very brave decision for the president. And it could cost him votes this fall. But I'm happy (and many of my gay friends are ecstatic) he finally got on the right side of history. The first sitting president to openly support gay marriage! A great day for America!
I'm just replying, as I always do to such posts from you, to say WHY. Why, when this only EVER became an issue in response to the idea of gay marriage. Before gay marriage nobody said, "Oh well, you know, the government should really get out of the marriage business." You present this idea as you do most of your ideas, as coming from the reasonable center. And, as usual, you are Solomon suggesting the splitting of the baby. The state retreating from the marriage business simply because gays want to marry is not a centrist idea; it is a p***y idea. And, in the context in which it is presented, it throws a bucket of slop on the otherwise proud molehill of civil rights in this country. Why, when asked to choose between hot and cold, do you always prefer tepid?
This is probably one area where I'm actually in complete agreement with Hightop. Why the heck is the state defining marriage anyway? Governments should call them all "unions" or "domestic partnerships" or "folks-shacking-up-isms" for legal purposes and allow all couples regardless of gender to reap the tax benefits equally.
States have always defined marriage - long before Christianity ever existed. Why doesn't religion just adopt the term "union" or "domestic partnership" instead?
I wasn't the Democrats who wanted to label marriage back in the mid 2000's. Republicans were the ones who wanted that garbage on ballots across America just to draw out the Evangelical hee-hays.
And once again you seem to be selectively filtering out my post if you will reread the rest of that post I said this: For that matter if you have bothered reading most of my post on this subject I say that such a situation, state getting out of marriage, is unlikely to happen. In fact my first post on this subject in this thread was pointing out to another poster how unlikely that was to happen.
In fairness to you, having seen that you were again proposing a position on marriage equality that I believe with all my being is a milquetoasty dodge, I did not read the rest of your post. I stopped when I saw you were pushing the same soft rope and reflexively replied. I'd have thought you'd recognize our dance by now or at least that they were playing our song. After replying I went back and skimmed your post and I did read the bolded part at the end and I thought that was a good "evolution" on your part. It reminded me too of the way that nor Gandhi nor MLK were against violent resistance if peaceful resistance didn't work. They were for peaceful resistance, then violent resistance if need be; they were not for passivity at all cost, they were for resistance to inequality at all cost. And I saw a similar equality-at-all-cost idea in the bold-font end of your post. But I'm sorry. I don't believe you when you say you were inspired to suggest the state get out of the marriage business because you'd seen a lot of divorces. You might think that was what inspired you, but you are a thinker and a reader and I expect you know, subconsciously at least, that this very idea, the very idea of the state getting out of the marriage business, was invented in order to give anti-marriage equality people a seemingly reasonable position from which to claim they weren't bigots, they just didn't like government 'interference.' You, who so loves the sweet smell of warmed over compromise, walking (or posting) proof that there actually is such a thing as a raging centrist, unsurprisingly took the bait. Hopefully Obama's announcement will be occasion for you to forget you ever held this soggy position. Or maybe you will double down as a matter of pride. I don't know. I think your heart is in the right place. I just think your views are as impossibly biased by your deep seated need for being in the middle as are those of the most rabid ideologue.
Thank you. You are free to believe whatever you want but this has been my opinion for years before gay marriage was an issue. It is also one of the reasons I am not married myself although I came very close twice. And again you are free to believe what you want.