Noah Baron, Staff Writer
Ideology: Liberal
According to AMERICAblog, Barack Obama’s legal team — likely on instructions from the White House — filed a motion to dismiss a legal challenge to the “Defense” of “Marriage” Act (DOMA). The full-length, fifty-four page assault on the Constitution and queer constituents can be found here. Among some of the claims the team makes are:
* Homosexuality is comparable to incest and pedophilia. Maybe if the Obama administration lawyers had a basic understanding of reality, they might comprehend that since children aren’t able to consent (unlike adults, the persons in question in same-sex marriage) the comparison to homosexuality is not a very good one. They might also understand the fact that incest has been scientifically linked to genetic problems in offspring, whereas homosexuality…not so much.
* DOMA is fine because it saves the federal government money. (Funny, I don’t recall that being a concern of the Obama administration.) Besides, aren’t our rights priceless? Or something? Maybe? This nonsense goes on and on; I encourage every person who voted for Obama to read this in full and then seriously reconsider voting for him again. You can’t write this off as simply him doing “his best” for gay people in today’s political climate: this was a relatively minor proceeding (i.e. whether the case would be able to go to court or not) and Obama would have been perfectly capable of distancing himself from the actions of his legal team. Instead, he chose to aggressively seek out and destroy the rights of same-sex couples. I was happy to see that a number of gay-rights groups, including the ACLU, GLAD, Lambda Legal, and HRC, among others, wrote a letter to the Obama administration complaining about his desertion of gay Americans. This shouldn’t be shocking to anyone who even vaguely recalls the Clinton administration. In fact, the Democratic Party has a strong tradition of trying to double-cross gay people. To me, the recent actions of the Obama administration, combined with his announced refusal to repeal Don’t Ask Don’t Tell for a long time, are merely a vindication of my belief that an Obama White House wouldn’t mean anything for gay rights.
Barack Obama should be absolutely ashamed of himself.
This has been cross-posted on The Match (http://www.thematch.wordpress.com) and The Commentariat (http://commentariat.columbiaspectator.com)
It’s an immense disappointment now (as are many of Obama’s broken promises), but at least he made no pretenses during the election that his views on same-sex marriage and LGBTQ rights were any different from John McCain’s. I had hoped that Obama would represent an era of actual change, but his actions over the course of his term so far confirm that he’s a politician, not a messiah.
Interesting comments, Noah. However, I have several issues with your comments.
First, aren’t you the one who just recently railed against Obama, a Democrat, for lack of progress on gay rights? I know you voted for an independent candidate; however, considering independent candidates rarely poll in significant numbers, I’m going to rationally conclude your comment would suggest that you favor Democrats on gay rights, as opposed to Republicans. Now, maybe it’s just me, but it’s kind of hard to “roll back” progress when there really hasn’t been any. Furthermore, Giuliani is pro-civil unions. Curiously, that’s also Obama’s position.
Second, I really disagree with you in saying that Giuliani’s campaign was an “epic fail.” He ran a strong campaign but ultimately his strategy proved unsuccessful, even though he led in the polls for months. Besides, the overwhelming majority of politicians who run for President aren’t selected as their party’s nominee, so Giuliani is far from alone in that so-called “failed campaign” category. However, if you would like an example of an “epic” campaign fail, please refer to the fact that Hillary Clinton’s camp was under the impression that convention delegates were assigned in entirety to the winning candidate, as in the Electoral College, when in fact they are awarded according to percentage.
Finally, one last note: high taxes actually are something we should be avoiding, despite your sarcastic but unconvincing argument. New Yorkers are subject to some of the highest property taxes in the nation – in addition to already relatively high sales and income taxes (compare this to New Hampshire, which has high property taxes but no sales or income taxes). It is my personal view that social issues inherently take a backseat in the presence of economic issues. It goes back to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – basic physiological requirements come far before social needs. If people can’t afford to feed themselves – whether it is because of oppressive tax burdens (as often favored by Democrats) or through government entitlement and economic stimulus programs that cause massive inflation (as recently favored by Democrats) –social equality immediately less pressing. Please don’t confuse what I’m saying: I’m a strong supporter of gay rights, but I’m also a strong supporter of economic rights. People will put up with almost any political order as long as the government doesn’t take too much of their money away from them; for example, the French Revolution was jump-started by unjust salt taxes. So yes, anything but high taxes.