Coming Out of the Marriage Closet
Posted by Dr Snyder on February 25th, 2011Feb 25
President Obama has finally decided to be honest. Ever since he began running for president, he invented the fiction that he was not in favor of homosexual marriage. After all, saying you approve of marriage between two men or two women was not a vote-getter in states where he had to appear as a moderate. Now he has come out of the closet, so to speak.
On Wednesday, the Obama administration announced that it would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act [DOMA] against legal challenges. A letter from Attorney General Eric Holder to Speaker of the House John Boehner states that both he and President Obama consider the law to be unconstitutional. Yes, you heard that correctly—defining marriage as being exclusively between a man and a woman is “unconstitutional.”
What kind of legal reasoning led to this declaration? According to Holder,
The [legislative] record contains numerous expressions reflecting moral disapproval of gays and lesbians and their intimate and family relationships—exactly the kind of stereotype-based thinking and animus the Equal Protection Clause is designed to guard against.
Well, I have animus against the promotion of sexual relations between adults and children. I’m also opposed to human beings having sexual relations with animals. Are those protected by the Equal Protection Clause as well? Should I be ashamed of my blatant stereotyping of individuals who practice such things? Am I a horrible person for expressing moral disapproval of those activities? The slippery slope has never gone away; it still exists, and we are seeing it in operation now.
It’s fascinating how the president and the attorney general have this greater grasp of the essence of our Constitution than the Founders. Apparently their history lessons and legal understanding differ from mine. We must bow to their superior insight and learn to change our views of American history:
In one sense, I’m glad to see Obama show his true colors. His views are now on full display: he approves of homosexual marriage, no matter how he may continue to dissemble. If you are unwilling to defend the traditional definition of marriage, then that means you believe other types of marriages should be allowed.
What’s a little more puzzling is why he decided to take this step publicly. It certainly consolidates his base, but that’s a base that comprises no more than 20% or so of the electorate. I would venture that this declaration of the “unconstitutionality” of heterosexual-only marriage will cost him many more votes than it will win.
What other pronouncements can he make now to rival this one? I suggest he go ahead and make a public commitment to socialism instead of perpetuating the pretense that he is not a socialist. I recommend he state categorically that he wants the United States to be a declining power in the world rather than simply letting the country slip into irrelevance.
Since he has finally decided to come clean on the marriage issue, it’s now time to let the people of this nation know who he really is without the political doublespeak. Of course, I and many others have known all along who he is, but unfortunately, many still have eyes that don’t see and ears that don’t hear.
May that blindness and deafness be cured.
2 comments
Comment by LordRevan on February 28, 2011 at 11:36 am
Hello Professor Snyder, it is I, Joshua from your T/R 2:50 class. Just decided to sign up since I finally have some free time. I like this article, though I have heard some commentators say that DOMA isn’t something the Federal Government should be getting involved in. I am not entirely sure where I fall under that. I mean, I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman, but shouldn’t the national government focus on getting the deficit and debt under control and eliminated first?
Constitutionality aside, I was watching the Huckabee show, and there were two pastors, a Hispanic and African-American (Why do we call people with black skin African-Americans, especially if they have never been to Africa? It gets kind of annoying having to worry about political correctness and what to call people, but I digress) were telling Huckabee that they were not happy, and that there would probably be a switch to who ever is going to run for the Republicans. We can only hope.
See you later,
Comment by Dr Snyder on February 28, 2011 at 12:14 pm
Joshua, ordinarily, the federal government shouldn’t be dictating many things. However, there are some basics such as right to life and a definition of marriage that are so fundamental to a society that it behooves the government to set up the ground rules at least. No one, when the Constitution was written, would have ever dreamed that abortion would become a “right,” nor would they have considered marriage to be anything other than what it had been throughout human history. Changing direction on those two matters changes all of society—its basis for functioning. The right to life, though, is found in the Declaration of Independence, and it is our principal founding document; the Constitution, and its interpretation, should take that into consideration.