On Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage
After the Obama love-fest that overtook much of the Internet and the general public this past week after he announced his support for gay marriage, I figured I would be remiss if I did not at least give it a mention on the Freedom Bulletin.
Obama’s endorsement wasn’t exactly surprising, especially after Vice President Biden kind of spilled the beans by saying he was “comfortable” with the idea of gay marriage.
And, despite all the gushing about how courageous Obama is, in my opinion, it wasn’t any more courageous of him to support gay marriage than not to support it. Yes, Obama took a political risk, but he would also have been taking a risk by sticking to his previous position of only supporting civil unions. Most of Obama’s base supports gay marriage, and he decided to gamble that energizing his base would outweigh any objections from his religious supporters and more conservative Democrats. If you look at the myriad polls that have been done, it seems like the American people are, overall, divided pretty evenly on gay marriage, so it’s not as if Obama went out on a limb and took an unpopular position for the principle of it.
Unlike what many newspaper columnists, activists, and online commentators seem to think, gay marriage does not equal “marriage equality” or “equal rights.” As long as our society treats it as better to be in a couple relationship than to be single, there will not be true equality. As I explained before, the government should get out of the business of marriage altogether and allow people and religious institutions to categorize relationships as they see fit. The only way to truly have equality and justice is for the law to treat people equally, regardless of their romantic relationship status. For a politician to stand up for single people, now that would be courageous.


