Actually I am rather surprised, not by the fact that he supports gay marriage, his alleged opposition was the most transparent lie in contemporary politics, but by the fact that he announced his switch in positions now. As the thumping that gay marriage took in North Carolina yesterday indicates, gay marriage is not popular in swing states crucial in November. Additionally, his support ensures that there will be a plank in the Democrat platform calling for gay marriage throughout the nation and that this will become a major issue in the fall. I assume that Obama and his advisors think that this will excite his base, but this makes zero political sense to me. Homosexual activists are most powerful in deep blue states that Obama has in the bag. They are relatively weak on the ground in states like Ohio and Pennsylvania where this election is going to be decided.
This move either comes from extreme arrogance on the part of Team Obama, assuming that they can’t lose no matter what they do, or they have been following the better polls as closely as I have, realize that things will be grim in the fall, and decided that their one hope is to play to their base. I vote for arrogance myself.
Obama made this announcement as a reaction to how the Tar Heel State voted yesterday – he’s sulking. God knows what he’ll do if he wins in November – require priests to marry men with men, women with women?
Dear Mr. President,
Would you object to your daughters marrying each other, assuming their legal age of course and remain in a committed, monogamous relationship? If so, why?
[He’s building a foundation of principles in sand.]
Obama is discussing gay marriage because it distracts attention from the horrid economy.
He’s desperate for $$$ Bill Maher is his biggest single donor at one mil. So now he has to rely on the queers/Hollywood for campaign dough. It’s a risk but he’s lost the white vote, the conservative vote, the independents, probably a lot of blacks even. His base is shrinking and it’s a calculated move to get the youth vote.
Given that he had instructed the DOJ to not represent the gov’t on DOMA, this comes as no surprise to me. I have a feeling this will backfire on him come November. People are mostly concerned about the economy and the future of our nation.
[…] Surprise! Barack Obama Now Supports Gay “Marriage” – D. McClarey, The American Catholic […]
My hunch is that people are going to be shocked by the cynicism of this.
As for the reasoning behind this announcement, I think it’s going to be a way of reminding everyone that Mitt is a Mormon without actually using the word “Mormon” (although, you know what kind of people oppose gay marriage? Mormons!). It’s also going to be a way to remind people that Obama’s black without making reference to his skin color. Because, you see, he can understand discrimination better than Mitt can, so he knows what gays go through. Mitt doesn’t, because Mitt’s white. In fact, you know what group used to discriminate against blacks? Mormons! That’s not to say that Mitt discriminates against blacks or gays, but he is a Mormon, and Obama’s black.
The really cynical thing, even more cynical than all of that, is that Obama’s counting on black preachers not to criticize him. He’s going to paint gay marriage as a civil rights issue, and claim to be on the cutting edge of civil rights, because, you know, he’s black and all, and Mitt’s a Mormon, and by doing so he’s going to be spitting in the face of every black minister who thinks differently. I think that he and his advisors have badly miscalculated how much this is going to offend Christians.
Oh, I forgot to note that he gave this interview to Robin Roberts from Good Morning America, which wouldn’t make any sense unless he felt like he needed it to be with a black. She’s a host of Good Morning America, not a major anchor or even a White House correspondant.
Well he did say that he did not look anything like the the dead white males on the US notes.
Follow the money. Joe is probably right; this is a calculated move to excite the base and generate funds that can be laundered into silly “war on women” ads in the swing states.
My contention is, as it has been all along, is that Obama is more of an ideologue than he is a politician. Everything he does has to be viewed through that lens. Remember when he said he’d rather be an effective (effective meaning of course implementing leftist idelogy as policy) one term president? That was one of the few moments I think he was being sincere.
Breitbart proves the announcement today was just Obama coming out of the closet on homosexuality.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/05/09/obama-was-for-same-sex-marriage-before-he-was-against-it
Fi$h on!
This is no surprise to me, since he was for gay-marriage for a long time but had to change positions and his words to be elected. Now he says he’s “evolved”…..yeah, right. This is what he said in a letter to a gay newspaper in Chicago in 2004:
“For the record, I opposed DOMA [the Defense of Marriage Act] in 1996. It should be repealed and I will vote for its repeal on the Senate floor. I will also oppose any proposal to amend the U.S. Constitution to ban gays and lesbians from marrying. This is an effort to demonize people for political advantage, and should be resisted … .”
http://republicansforfamilyvalues.com/2008/10/18/obama-calls-defense-of-marriage-act-doma-abhorrent-in-letter-to-chicago-gay-newspaper/
God help us all if he is re-elected. How many other abhorrent issues has he “evolved” into to force down our throats?
Why should we be surprised that someone who supports same-sex sexual unions and thus same-sex sexual acts, also supports same-sex “marriage”? The question we should ask President Obama is:
President Obama, how do same-sex sexual acts respect the inherent Dignity of the human person?
Gay-marriage redefines the human being as having no soul, no rational, immortal soul. No soul, no unalienable rights, endowed by “their Creator”, no free will, no freedom. Obama is preparing the soil to plant absolute tyranny, like that of the United Nations, wherein one gets inalienable rights from the state. Obama has no business redefining the human person. As president Obama has no “personally”, Obama only has constituently.
Mary, how does gay marriage redefine the human being as soulless? It redefines marriage, sure, but how does it deny personhood? I’m not looking for a fight or anything; I’m genuinely curious.
K: It is sad.
I think it would be that the soul is devoid of sanctifying grace because the person committed, and may be committed to promulgating, mortal sin; and has not repented, confessed, done penance, etc.
I don’t know about personhood. Corporations have legal personhood, unlimited existence, and limited liability. I’m an accountant.
Such poor people are slaves. It is sad. Their vices form their fetters.
Hi Kristin and Mary– I don;t know for sure Kristin, but I took Mary’s words to mean that person redefined with no dignity as image of God and no conscience, are more like animals– ( yes yes aquinas– but not human souls )
It is obvious that President Obama has never grasped the meaning of civil marriage.
The civil codes of most countries contain no formal definition of marriage, but a functional definition can be found in the provision, common to all of them, that the child conceived or born in marriage has the husband for father. Everything else that distinguishes marriage from unregulated cohabitation, civil unions or domestic partnerships flows from that.
No one, surely, will deny that the state has a clear interest in the filiation of children being clear, certain and incontestable. It is central to its concern for the upbringing and welfare of the child, for protecting rights and enforcing obligations between family members and to the orderly succession to property. To date, no better, simpler, less intrusive means than marriage have been found for ensuring, as far as possible, that the legal, biological and social realities of paternity coincide. And that is no small thing.
It is also quite irrelevant to same-sex couples, whom nature has not made potentially fertile.
In the space of the few seconds that it took Obama to get those words out of his mouth, he managed to do what Romney hasn’t been able to do in over 5 years of running for President – convince social conservatives to vote for Romney. Obama giftwrapped the social conservative vote, put a pretty little bow on it, and handed it to Romney without Romney having to lift a finger to win over, or move rightward to shore up, the support of social conservatives.
Not ALL of us, mind you (I still won’t vote for him under any circumstances). But enough social conservatives to make a difference, especially in swing states like Ohio and Missouri, and red states that Obama won like North Carolina and Virginia.
In my own household, Romney picked up a vote that he would otherwise not have received after Obama’s announcement. Just 2 weeks after telling a Romney campaign caller that she would not be supporting Romney, my wife announced yesterday that she was going to vote for him.
As for me, even if I were inclined to change my mind about voting for Romney (which I am most assuredly NOT so inclined), I STILL wouldn’t vote for him because I have already publicly pledged my support for Constitution Party nominee Virgil Goode, and have personally pledged my support to Virgil himself (a friend of over a decade).
But I think it’s safe to say that, after Tuesday, a whole lot of social conservatives who were on the fence about Romney, and even some who had made up their mind to go 3rd party, are now firmly entrenched in his camp.
I guess it was Wednesday, not Tuesday, when Obama made his announcement. But it was Tuesday when the news leaked that the announcement was forthcoming.
It was a blunder of historic proportions Jay, and I think it shows the dangers of a man being surrounded by sycophantic underlings and only reading a sycophantic media. Obama simply could not conceal any longer the contempt he truly feels for us “bitter clingers”.
The Rasmussen tracking poll today shows Romney 50- Obama 43.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/obama_administration/daily_presidential_tracking_poll
This is the first time Romney has reached 50. That is setting off alarm bells among wiser Democrat strategists.
“…I think it shows the dangers of a man being surrounded by sycophantic underlings…”
What Donald writes is 100% correct. Now yes, I realize that what is posted at the following web link provided below is not germane to the topic of this blog post, but it IS germane to what Donald pointed out. Just read this – how Obama keeps a lying bully of a man in charge of the agency that regulates the safe use of the fires of creation. This typifies everything about the Obama Administration. And again, while it’s not technically relevant, it sure as heck exemplies the contempt Obama and his henchmen have for any right dealings with those who disagree with him.
http://commentarius-ioannis.blogspot.com/2012/05/corruption-of-nrc-chairman-gregory.html
Just like the HHS mandate attempting to force the Catholic Church to pay for contraceptives, it’s only a matter of time when there will be the futile attempt to force the Catholic Church to performing homo-weddings.
Kristin: Marriage is a covenant between two souls. Informed consent necessary to marriage is free will in action, without which there is no marriage. Free will is the image of God in our souls. For there to be gay-marriage, Obama must deny the action of the human being’s free will; informed consent of the human being’s soul. Otherwise, it is lust, the vice of lust and licentiousness. Otherwise, it is as Anzlyne says practicing the instinct of animals, for animals have animal souls. Animals’ souls die with the animal as they have no conscience, reason or discernment. Therefore, animals are innocent in that they do not reason. The human being is composed of body and soul. When two become one at conception, God creates an immortal soul. When the human soul consents to do virtue, the human body rejoices. The body and soul are in communion and life occurs. When the human soul consents to do vice, the human body suffers as sin is its own punishment. The body and soul are in divorce and death occurs, as the soul leaving the body is called death. Death is the wages of sin.
Obama is denying the rational soul of the human being who reasons, wills and gives informed consent. Obama denying the rational soul of the person is the first step in Obama wanting to take the life of the person. How curious, that Obama’s Information czar, Cass Sunstein has written 35 books on making animals into legal persons, while Obama is detracting personhood from human beings. “A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.” Thomas Jefferson. …and you have an immortal soul. When Obama speaks, he speaks for the constituency entrusted to him as president. Saying it is “Personally” does not make him innocent of betraying his constituency.
T. Shaw:
As an accountant, you know that corporations have legal personhood from the time that they are incorporated by their trustees as corporations. The legal corporate person is incorporated as a legal corporate person. At no time is there a legal corporate person that is not a legal corporate person. The legal corporate persons are framed according to the sovereign personhood of the human being to function under the law. Human existence is the criterion for the objective ordering of human rights. (Suarez from Aquinas) The Person is a person always. The person is immutable. The human being, composed of body and soul from conception, is who he is, and at no time is he anything but who he is: a sovereign person. The human body will grow to be whoever the human soul is. No soul, no life, and no need for abortion.
Thanks Anzlyne: You said it very well. I should use words like posited it and succinctly but you said it very well.
“it’s only a matter of time when there will be the futile attempt to force the Catholic Church to performing homo-weddings.”
What I foresee, more precisely, is a situation in which the state will require anyone with CIVIL authority to officiate at weddings or sign off on marriage licenses to not “discriminate” against same-sex couples, thereby making Catholic weddings (and those of other denominations that do not recognize gay marriage) no longer valid for legal purposes. This has been the case for centuries in some other countries, and Catholic couples deal with it by simply having two weddings — one civil, one religious.
I would almost prefer that the Church voluntarily step aside from involvement in the civil aspects of marriage at this point, instead of waiting for it to be taken away from them. That way, a clear line in the sand is drawn between civil marriage and the Sacrament of Matrimony, and they are understood to be separate institutions.
Elaine Krewer
You are right about mandatory civil marriage, which exists in most of Europe, even in those with concordats with the Holy See.
In France, for example, it is an offence for a minister of religion habitually to perform wedding ceremonies for couples not legally married to each other. It constitutes an attack on the civil status of persons (Code Pénal Art 433-21] “Habitually” was added so as not to penalise priests who performed “marriages of conscience.”
When the bishops asked Napoléon to restore the Church’s right to perform marriages, he remarked that amidst the manifold ritual provisions made by the Divine Lawgiver of the Jews for the various offices and transactions of life, there is no ceremony prescribed for the celebration of marriage. As Mary de Voe reminds us, marriage is constituted by consent.
Elaine / Michael right at as rain about marriage and the State in other countries.. that can and maybe will happen here.. and that is the part that saddens me..
I know that the Sacrament and Marriage and the Church will not die of this– they will not cease to exist. and as a Church we can go on living within our society — but a separate life within the organism of the State– maybe a bit like the Jews during the time of Caesar Augustus. In America today our government becomes increasingly foreign to us.
The Church will continue. the family will continue, the Sacrament of Marriage will continue… but it is sad because we are called to leaven society– and we have. (ask Dinesh D’ Souza)– and to kind of abdicate that calling is going in the wrong direction– maybe prudent for now, but sad.
America has been a wonderful Catholic experiment and I don’t want us to give up now.
Yes T. Shaw, the rational, immortal soul of the human being without sanctifying grace is deadened by mortal sin, but man’s soul is not annihilated. The soul must be judged by the Lord of Heaven and earth and go to eternal bliss in heaven or eternal hell. This is the constitutional freedom, the right to choose, an exercise of free will and the mark of a free person, as opposed to the animal soul, that is not a person, not immortal, not rational. .
By endorsing gay-marriage for homosexual practitioners, Obama, as chief executive has reinforced their choice of lust and vice, their error and their ignorance. By endorsing gay-marriage for homosexual practitioners, Obama, as chief executive has enabled their decent into eternal misery. Obama has refused to acknowledge and enable their right to the TRUTH, to spiritual maturity which may result in physical sexual maturity. The American Psychiatric Assoc. had at one time diagnosed homosexuality as arrested development. It was no small thing for the psychiatrist to declare that the patient under his care had matured and was now a mature individual. Homosexual predators are criminals. We are talking about individuals who believe that abusing, through the vice of lust, their bodies is a civil right.
As President of the United States, all citizens are constituents of Obama, and Obama must speak for all. This is important because not all of Obama’s constituents are emancipated, spiritually mature and physically able to withstand the indoctrination of gay-marriage as a legally protected institution. As captive constituents of Obama’s presidency, minor children and those who have not achieved adulthood and reached the age of informed sexual consent necessary to function as a sovereign person in freedom as citizens, are being denied the “blessings of Liberty” and their “pursuit of Happiness”. Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage denies the infant children and minors, the freedom, the right to choose. Gay marriage is a rather uncivil right, a corruption of the covenant of marriage. Legalizing the indoctrination into homosexual behavior for infant and minor children, the captive audience of Obama’s constituents is treason. Obama commits treason against our constitutional posterity, and the Preamble, the stated purpose of our U.S. Constitution, which Obama has sworn to uphold. In endorsing gay-marriage for captive, un-emancipated virgins and innocent infants, physically and spiritually immature captive constituents, emancipated constituents, who practice virtue, and the captive immortal souls of all American citizens, Obama is committing treason and perjury. If I were to tell an infant child that homosexual behavior is gay-marriage, I would be lying. If I worked for the government, I would be committing perjury. If I were president of the United States, I would be committing treason. It is criminal for Obama to abuse infant and minor children by imposing the vice of lust through homosexual behavior as an alternate lifestyle for our immortal souls.
Infants, before the age of reason at seven years have no shield against being led into a deluge of corruption. Un-emancipated children before the age of eighteen years, have no legally required informed sexual consent to give to be indoctrinated into the vice of gay-marriage.
There is no joy, in homosexual behavior, of having procreated an immortal soul, another sovereign person, another human being for eternal happiness, and another individual substance of a rational nature made in the image of God who will pursue his destiny. Therefore, homosexual behavior repudiates the sovereign person, denying him first and foremost LIFE, the LIBERTY to exercise his First Amendment rights TO FREEDOM OF RELIGION, SPEECH, PRESS, and PEACEABLE ASSEMBLY. The homosexual practitioner repudiates our Creator’s dominion over another person to live, to love, and to the pursuit of Happiness.
Michael Patterson-Seymour: Oh, yes, there is: God brought the woman to Adam and Adam said” This is flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone. This is the Sacrament of Matrimony. Adam gives consent to Eve as his helpmate in procreating God’s work in the human race, and this was before Satan twisted man’s life into sin. Adam knew perfectly well what he was doing and saying, informed sexual consent. Those who reject the Sacred Scripture cannot reject the fact that they have come into being through the work of one man and one woman. God be praised. One Hail Mary in Latin.
Elaine Krewer: “I would almost prefer that the Church voluntarily step aside from involvement in the civil aspects of marriage at this point, instead of waiting for it to be taken away from them. That way, a clear line in the sand is drawn between civil marriage and the Sacrament of Matrimony, and they are understood to be separate institutions.” Again, as Michael Paterson-Seymour reminds us, the Sacrament of Matrimony is through the informed sexual consent of two participating adults who enter into the office of husband and wife. The office of husband and of wife are vocations, giving St. Paul the authority to say: Husbands love your wives, wives be obedient to your husbands. These are vocations to be spiritually directed by Holy Mother Church. Honestly, I believe that homosexual relationships are entered into by people who have not achieved informed sexual consent as evidenced by the lack of repsect they have for one another as human beings. It is respect that these unfulfilled individuals seek. So, unless the state creates the human person, body and soul, marriage is a covenant between the soul of one man and the soul of one woman and God. What God has joined together, let no man put asunder (flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone). Render unto God the state wihich belongs to God.
“mandatory civil marriage, which exists in most of Europe”
I don’t think that would fly in the United States given that non-marriage “domestic partnerships” and cohabitation have become entrenched in our society.
What I foresee and could tolerate (though it would certainly not be the ideal) would be a situation in which the State only concerns itself with civil marriage and doesn’t impose ANY regulation whatsoever on religious marriage (as France does by making it illegal to perform a religious wedding for a couple not civilly married). If you enter a civil marriage or civil union, the State treats you as married; if you don’t, the State treats you as merely cohabiting, regardless of what kind or how many other weddings you may have had.
The Catholic Church, meanwhile, could require couples to be civilly married before they can marry in the church — just as, at the other end of the process, you now have to be civilly divorced before you can petition a tribunal for an annulment. It would not be much different from the situation that now exists when a couple who has married outside the Church has their marriage “blessed” or validated — the ceremony is purely religious and no marriage license or registration with the State is involved.
Elaine Krewer: The homosexual agenda is bent on removing the sanctions against homosexual behavior by codifying both civil and then religious marriage to acccept, acknowledge and recognize their practice of homosexual behavior as legitmate marriage. Civil unions for homosexual practitioners will produce happy homosexuals but only because they exercise their free will to do unnatural acts. For the homosexual practitioner it is about exercising their free will to choose to demonstrate to themselves and to others, us, their God given talent to choose. It is the same for the abortionist, the murderer and the saint. But gay-marriage will produce a pair of husbands, a husband and a husband; a pair of wives, a wife, and a wife; no children, no mothers, no fathers, only two husbands as partners and two wives as partners. Far be it from me to indicate that this arrangement is feckless and ridiculous, both at the same time.
Elaine Krewer wrote
“I don’t think that would fly in the United States given that non-marriage “domestic partnerships” and cohabitation have become entrenched in our society. “
Well, France has civil unions (PACS – pacte civil de solidarité) Because they were introduced as an alternative to unregulated cohabitation, rather than to marriage, they can be used by same-sex and opposite-sex couples and about 90% are between opposite-sex couples.
Similarly, Belgium and the Netherlands, both of which permit same-sex civil marriage (which France does not) retain a system of civil unions that remain popular with both same-sex and opposite-sex couples.
The prohibition on religious weddings for unmarried couples is logical enough if, like the French, you regard marriage as primarily concerned with the civil status of children. It would be like allowing religious adoptions or religious wills. That is why the greatest modern authority on the Code Civil, le doyen Carbonnier (1908–2003) could write, « le cœur du mariage, ce n’est pas le couple, c’est la présomption de paternité » [The heart of marriage is not the couple, but the presumption of paternity] That is why so many jurists, many of them staunch, anti-clerical atheists, reject same-sex marriage. For them, the argument is the same in both cases.
The homosexual agenda has rejected civil unions offered to them by the several states. The civil unions of Belgium and the Netherlands without France, whether same sex or man and woman may be compared to common law marraige here in the U.S. The states recognize any domestic relationship after seven years duration, with all of the civil rights of a certified, legal marriage, and including every impediment. Homosexuals of a thirty year relationship point to their relationship as a reason to pursue civil marriage as a civil right, but they refuse domestic civil unions, making their demands questionable. Actually making their demands uncivil. The children being brought into the world are the concern of the state. It is the duty of the state to protect their life, their innocence and their virginity.
“The prohibition on religious weddings for unmarried couples is logical enough if, like the French, you regard marriage as primarily concerned with the civil status of children. It would be like allowing religious adoptions or religious wills.” The state does not make prohibitions on any religious actions for or against people. It is the separation of church and state and the freedom of the conscience clause and the free will of the people. The state does not “allow” religious adoptions or religious wills. The state has no sovereign authority over the church.