You’re Likable Enough, Gay People

[Ibby]

Wait, what? You're intolerant of people who don't have opinions?
cause people who are intolerant of neutral parties are the ones i was calling jerks...

[piercehawkeye45]

Obama is not a savior. This was predicted by many before he beat Hilary.

[xoxoxoBruce]

OK, my bad. I misunderstood your statement.

[Griff]

Originally Posted by piercehawkeye45

Obama is not a savior. This was predicted by many before he beat Hilary.

Well, he did save us from Hilary.

[classicman]

The Cellar : We're tolerant, intolerant and jerks... all at the same time.

[warch]

I say let's get Warren and his family in the room and have him talk with the amazing kids with two loving dads who says grace, then split some homemade lasagna. That'd be good.

[Elspode]

Law forbidding equal rights for gays have their only argument based in religion. Since two gays marrying each other hurts no one else, the government has zero basis to deny it, because laws forbidding such unions are defacto violations of the separation of church and state.

If you agree with this, you are neither tolerant nor intolerant. You are rational. If you are against it, you are neither tolerant nor intolerant. You are religious.

If your church doesn't wish to sanction the marriage of same sex couples, your church has that prerogative. If your government doesn't wish to allow such a contractual union, your government is engaging in discrimination based on religion.

[Ibby]

This is interesting -- and I'm not entirely certain what it means.

Obama's transition website, Change.gov, includes a section called 'Agenda' that outlines the administration's objectives in any of a couple dozen policy areas. For the most part, the 'Agenda' section is a near carbon-copy of the 'Issues' section on Obama's campaign website, BarackObama.com.

In the area of 'Civil Rights', however, there is a significant difference between the campaign website and Change.gov, the transition website. Specifically, the transition website makes a much broader range of commitments to the gay and lesbian community.

Whereas BarackObama.com includes a couple of items of interest to the gay community -- namely, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act and expanded hate-crimes statutes -- that is the extent of it. The gay and lesbian community is not mentioned explicitly -- in fact, the word 'gay' does not appear anywhere in the 'Civil Rights' section of BarackObama.com. By contrast, the Change.gov website includes a section addressed explicitly to the gay community, and it covers not only ENDA and hate crimes, but also promises Obama's support for the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell, an expansion of adoption rights for gay couples, his backing of "full civil unions that give same-sex couples legal rights and privileges equal to those of married couples", and his opposition to a Constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.

What to make of the difference? On the one hand, this would seem to demonstrate Obama's (over)sensitivity to the politics embedded in gay rights issues. A waffling, now-you-see-it, now-you-don't attitude toward gay rights is exactly what many in the community fear from the administration. On the other hand, one can argue that Obama is moving in the right direction, now willing to make a more explicit and comprehensive series of commitments to the gay community than he was while in campaign mode.

One consequence of the Rick Warren controversy is that Obama may now be under a greater amount of pressure from Democrats to repeal Don't Ask, Don't Tell, to pass ENDA, and to expand hate crimes statutes, and to do all of the above relatively quickly. As we have pointed out before, large majorities of the public are in line with the Obama position on all three issues. If Obama is not willing to expend the relatively modest amount of political capital required on those, then one can reasonably anticipate that he won't be willing to touch more controversial subject areas like adoption or civil unions.

UPDATE: Several readers write in to point out that BarackObama.com does contain some of the aforementioned text on gay rights, but it's buried about four clicks deep under the 'People' tab rather than under the 'Issues' tab. The point is, these are not exactly things that Obama was putting front and center.

From FiveThirtyEight.com

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

It makes me happy every time a special interest group complains they are not being catered to.

Here I'm in 100% agreement with Bruce.

Noting, though, that like Bruce, I favor some interest groups over others. Particularly ones that protect more interests of a wider selection of people than they say they do.

[wolf]

Originally Posted by Elspode

If your church doesn't wish to sanction the marriage of same sex couples, your church has that prerogative. If your government doesn't wish to allow such a contractual union, your government is engaging in discrimination based on religion.

If the government makes gay marriage the law of the land, then they are getting into the business of religion, because what happens to my hypothetical church if I refuse to perform ceremonies for gay couples because it's against the tenets of my religion?

See, the government should be totally out of the marriage business.

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by worlf

because what happens to my hypothetical church if I refuse to perform ceremonies for gay couples because it's against the tenets of my religion?

Same thing that happens now to the Catholic churches that refuse to marry non-Catholics: nothing. You can get married (according to the government's definition) without any church at all, and the church ceremony alone is not sufficient for your marriage to be recognized by the government. What the government really needs to do is just admit that they've ben in the civil union business this whole time.

[wolf]

Remember the printer who refused service to a gay couple or group because he was a Christian ... or the Christian pharmacists are resistant to dispensing the morning after pill? Or the Canadian minister who was accused of a bias crime?

It's not a simple as you believe.

[jinx]

Printers and pharmacies aren't churches though.... but, remember the Boyscouts?

[piercehawkeye45]

That problem will appear but those will be rare occurrences, not enough to make a valid argument against gay marriage. Also, when gay marriage starts to become legal in the state many religious peoples will then start banning it within the church, getting rid of that problem.

Marriage does not have an overall definition and is defined by each religion that practices it. If you want marriage to be a man and a woman, define it within your religion.

[wolf]

The point I'm trying to make is that individual religions will likely NOT be permitted to make a definition different from what the government legislates. If gay marriage is the law of the land, and a church denies that status, then the church would be liable to charges of discrimination, accused of hate crimes, etc.

If churches were able to define marriage as they saw fit, Mormons would still have plural marriage.

Would enforcement of gay marriage within a church also apply to Muslims?

"Eminent scholars of Islam, such as Sheikh ul-Islam Imam Malik, Imam Shafi amongst others, rule that the Islam disallows homosexuality and ordains a capital punishment for a person guilty of it." Wikipedia on Homosexuality and Islam