Obama Supports Marriage Equality:

President Obama has stopped dither­ing after he was forced off the fence regard­ing the gay mar­riage issue. Vice President Joe Biden in an inter­view last Sunday stat­ed that he was total­ly com­fort­able with the mar­riage of same-sex cou­ples, and frankly he did not see what the fuss was beyond that. This cre­at­ed a flur­ry of activ­i­ty around the issue, many won­dered if Biden had mis­spo­ken once again, he is well-known as a gaffe machine. The next day Education sec­re­tary Arne Duncan stat­ed on MSNBC that he was also in favor of same-sex mar­riage, Interviewer Mark Halperin asked Duncan if he had ever said so in pub­lic before, Duncan shot back “I have nev­er been asked before”

Cable chan­nels lit up with spec­u­la­tion as to what Obama’s posi­tion would be, as Illinois state sen­a­tor Barack Obama was for civ­il union , his aides argued he was still evolv­ing, this did not slow down the inces­sant 24 hour chat­ter on cable, with many all but demand­ing that the pres­i­dent come out one way or the oth­er on the issue.

Obama like any politi­cian spent time con­sid­er­ing the polit­i­cal ram­i­fi­ca­tions either way. This could not have come at a worse time for the pres­i­dent in my esti­ma­tion, the state of North Carolina just this week vot­ed deci­sive­ly by a twen­ty point mar­gin to out­law same-sex mar­riage. North Carolina is an extreme­ly cru­cial state for the pres­i­dent, no demo­c­rat had won that state until Jimmy Carter did in 1976, Obama won North Carolina by a com­fort­able mar­gin in 2008 , owing large­ly to the large African-American com­mu­ni­ty there, which turned out in big num­bers to give Obama the win.

Other swing states like Colorado, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, Pennsylvania may fac­tor into how this ulti­mate­ly plays out in November. Many swing states have large chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tive pop­u­la­tions who are vehe­ment­ly opposed to same-sex mar­riage or even civ­il unions.

The Hollywood crowd is ecsta­t­ic with the pres­i­den­t’s decision,segments of the media are also hap­py but , it is still left to be seen how actu­al vot­ers will react to this his­toric deci­sion by Obama. (The LGBT) com­mu­ni­ty had long framed this issue as a civ­il rights issue, link­ing their sojourn to the civ­il rights strug­gles African-amer­i­cans waged.

This strat­e­gy has angered some with­in the African-American com­mu­ni­ty who believe that there is no con­nec­tion between the two. African-Americans are actu­al­ly large­ly against gay mar­riage, now coined (mar­riage equal­i­ty) for palat­i­bil­i­ty. These are some of the very vot­ers who just vot­ed unaminous­ly to out­law mar­riage equal­i­ty in North Carolina, and the most loy­al part of the pres­i­den­t’s base.

Many pun­dits argue that blacks are just not gonna aban­don the pres­i­dent on this issue, because of the pride they feel at hav­ing a black man in the white house.I am not so sure, hav­ing lis­tened to the views of some pas­tors who fear that they will be forced to mar­ry peo­ple of the same gen­der against their core chris­t­ian prin­ci­ples. These pas­tors have large con­gre­ga­tions which may not be hap­py with this deci­sion. The ques­tion is, are these vot­ers going to go out and vote for Mitt Romney? Or will they chose instead may just choose instead not to go out and vote at all?

Mitt Romney the repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in response to the pres­i­den­t’s posi­tion, stat­ed that he believed that mar­riage should be between a man and a woman. Romney also offered up more extend­ed and nuanced ‚(wishy/​washy) plat­i­tudes, which I will not delve into at this time.

Many hail the pres­i­den­t’s posi­tion as a his­toric moment for civ­il rights, the ques­tion is what kind of out­come will it have for his short-term polit­i­cal future? As the pres­i­den­t’s posi­tion has evolved it behoves all of us to be cog­nizant of the protes­ta­tions of those who invoke God’s name into the debate, many of them used his name to jus­ti­fy slav­ery, Jim Crowe, to bar inter racial mar­riage, and to gen­er­al­ly dis­crim­i­nate against minorities.

Whether we agree or dis­agree with the deci­sion of the pres­i­dent, those whose rights he pro­fess­es to pro­tect are no less than the rest of us. Even if he and the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty are sin­ful and deserve to burn in hell it still is not up to the rest of us to impose those penal­ties. As the scrip­tures clear­ly states let the wheat and the tares grow togeth­er untill the day of harvest.

God is the ulti­mate judge.