defense of logic…
Today the Obama administration backed the Defense of Marriage Act, much to the disappointment of the gay community.
In an article on theAtlantic.com a concerned reader was wondering what obama was thinking.
I’m floored by the Obama Administration’s stance on DOMA. It doesn’t make any legal sense. The only two plausible explanations i can think of:
Obama is taking a hard line on marriage to protect himself from the attack dogs when he ends DADT.
or The language in this brief was written by the previous administration, and inadvertently and/or lazily regurgitated here, with or without his knowledge. I simply cannot fathom Elena Kagan arguing this with a straight face.
The author of the article agrees.
Me neither. My best bet is that it was a decision not to force a federal judicial ruling on DOMA yet, and was written with no real understanding of how it would impact already rattled gay supporters.
If that’s true, there is a clear absence of political coordination on gay issues in the White House. [...] In the absence of any legislative action from Pelosi or Reid and total silence from Obama, the viciously anti-gay rhetoric in this brief can easily be misread, and could do substantive harm to gay couples and our fight for civil equality.
The alternative explanation is that Obama actually wants to kill marriage equality in favor of separate but equal civil unions. But he cannot do that after so many states have already granted marriage equality. And he surely cannot believe that’s what he was elected for.
That last part of his response is quite telling. Speculating almost as an afterthought, he is questioning whether Obama actually wants to kill “marriage equality in favor of separate but equal civil unions.” Umm… am I missing something here, or was that not exactly what Obama’s stance was during the campaign?
I see this as a prime example of Obama delusion syndrome, despite the fact that he ran as an anti-gay marriage candidate, some (perhaps many) in the gay community feel let down that he has followed through with an anti-gay marriage act. Either they were not paying attention to him during the campaign, felt he was just being disingenuous to get votes, or that he had somehow changed his mind about the issue.
I am just baffled how any gay American could vote for a man with an anti-gay marriage stance, then feel let down or confused by him when he does not back gay marriage. That’s like me voting for Obama then feeling let down when he started spreading the wealth instead of cutting taxes.