Public opinion continues to shift in favor of same-sex marriage, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll, which also finds initial signs that President Obama’s support for the idea may have changed a few minds.
Overall, 53 percent of Americans say gay marriage should be legal, hitting a high mark in support while showing a dramatic turnaround from just six years ago, when just 36 percent thought it should be legal. Thirty-nine percent, a new low, say gay marriage should be illegal.
The poll also finds that 59 percent of African Americans say they support same-sex marriage, up from an average of 41 percent in polls leading up to Obama’s announcement of his new position on the matter. Though statistically significant, it is a tentative result because of the relatively small sample of black voters in the poll.
Leadership generates its own support for policy.
Hopefully, this lesson will stick, but I doubt it.
North Carolina Governor Beverly Perdue says Tuesday’s passage of Amendment One makes the state look like Mississippi. Perdue made the remarks in response to a question from WITN’s Brittany Gunter while in Greenville Friday morning.
On Tuesday, 61% of the state’s voters approved the constitutional amendment which bans same sex marriages. State law already prohibits gay marriages.
The governor, a Democrat who said leading up to the vote that she was against the amendment, told WITN that the result is wrong for the state.
“People around the country are watching us, and they’re really confused to have been such a progressive forward thinking economically driven state that invested in education and that stood up for the civil rights people including the civil rights marches back in the 50s and 60s and 70s,” said Perdue. “People are saying what in the world is going on with North Carolina, we look like Mississippi.”
Yes. Yes you do look like Mississippi, and yes, this is a bad thing.
You see, I’ve been watching the kerfuffle over Obama and gay marriage since Biden’s statement on Sunday, and what appeared to be a full on weasel by Obama, or at least his Press Secretary Jay Carney, from which I inferred that the President would give the weasel answer.
I had been drafting my scathing response to this in my head for days, so when he actually made a clear and unambiguous statement I was surprised.
But my first reaction wasn’t surprise. My first thought was, “Son of a bitch! I have to rewrite now!”
At least I had the basic level of self awareness to be ashamed.
Before President Obama left the White House on Tuesday morning to fly to an event in Albany, several aides intercepted him in the Oval Office. Within minutes it was decided: the president would endorse same-sex marriage on Wednesday, completing a wrenching personal transformation on the issue.
As described by several aides, that quick decision and his subsequent announcement in a hastily scheduled network television interview were thrust on the White House by 48 hours of frenzied will-he-or-won’t-he speculation after Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. all but forced the president’s hand by embracing the idea of same-sex unions in a Sunday talk show interview.
Advisers say now that Mr. Obama had intended since early this year to define his position sometime before Democrats nominate him for re-election in September. Yet many of the president’s allies believed he would not do so, trusting instead in his strong support from gay voters for having ended a ban on openly gay people in the military and disavowing a federal law defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
Such caution was understandable, the allies said, given the unpredictable fallout the president would face by taking a clear stand on one of the most contentious and politically charged social issues of the day, before what is likely to be a close election. Mr. Obama’s closest advisers say only the timing was in question. Mr. Biden’s unexpected remarks undoubtedly accelerated the timetable.
Initially Mr. Obama and his aides expected that the moment would be Monday, when the president was scheduled to be on “The View,” the ABC daytime talk show, which is popular with women. Certainly, they thought, he would be asked his position on same-sex marriage by one of the show’s hosts, who include Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg.
Yet the pressure had become too great to wait until then, his aides told him; on Monday, the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, was pummeled with questions from skeptical reporters about Mr. Obama’s stance. After the Tuesday morning meeting, Dan Pfeiffer, the president’s communications director, contacted ABC and offered a wide-ranging interview with the president for the following day.
Oh snap. They took a scoop away from the ladies of The View. There will be consequences.
All joking aside, this is an unambiguous good.
BTW, the best comment I’ve heard about this so far was made by Kurt_T (His web site, www.kurttrue.com should be coming on line shortly):
Hahahaha! I really DID want people to marry their pets and climb Mount Rushmore in nipple clamps and buttless chaps! And this makes it all possible!
Suckers!
OK, I’m off to the Kinko’s to print up some recruitment materials for your children.
-kurt_t President and Supreme Cher Impersonator for Life Secret Gay Agenda
The timing was disappointing though, it seem to be calculated to avoid any impact on the North Carolina hate amendment vote, for which the executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans rightly castigates him, (scroll down) though partisan considerations might have informed his statement.
It was the biggest moment yet for Mitt Romney’s foreign policy team: a conference call last Thursday, dialed into by dozens of news outlets from around the globe, to dissect and denounce President Obama’s record on national security.
But Richard Grenell, the political strategist who helped organize the call and was specifically hired to oversee such communications, was conspicuously absent, or so everyone thought.
It turned out he was at home in Los Angeles, listening in, but stone silent and seething. A few minutes earlier, a senior Romney aide had delivered an unexpected directive, according to several people involved in the call.
“Ric,” said Alex Wong, a policy aide, “the campaign has requested that you not speak on this call.” Mr. Wong added, “It’s best to lay low for now.”
For Mr. Grenell, the message was clear: he had become radioactive.
It was the climax of an unexpectedly messy and public dispute over the role and reputation of Mr. Grenell, a foreign policy expert who is gay and known for his support of same-sex marriage, his testy relationship with the news media and his acerbic Twitter postings on everything from Rachel Maddow’s femininity to how Callista Gingrich “snaps on” her hair.
They hire this guy as a national security expert, he organizes a conference call on the subject, but because the Talibaptist knuckle draggers hate “te ghey”, the Romney campaign folds like overcooked broccoli.
Somehow, I don’t expect him to go for a Sistah Soljah moment.
Nance said he recorded a conversation with the woman, whose name is Jodie Brunstetter, on video, and that she confirmed that she used the term “Caucasian” in a discussion about the marriage amendment, but insisted that otherwise her comments had been taken out of context by other poll workers.
…Nance paraphrased the remarks, as told to him by those who were present: “During the conversation, Ms. Brunstetter said her husband was the architect of Amendment 1, and one of the reasons he wrote it was to protect the Caucasian race. She said Caucasians or whites created this country. We wrote the Constitution. This is about protecting the Constitution. There already is a law on the books against same-sex marriage, but this protects the Constitution from activist judges.”
Nance said he recruited a friend, who works for the Coalition to Protect All North Carolina Families, to witness his interview with Jodie Brunstetter. He said Brunstetter reluctantly acknowledged that she had used the term “Caucasian” and then repeated the statement previously attributed to her, but substituted the pronoun “we” for “Caucasian. Nance said Brunstetter insisted there was nothing racial about her remarks, but could not explain why she used the term “Caucasian.”
When you look at many of the motivations on many of the hot button issues of “social conservative”,† you find either racial animus or racial paranoia at its core.
First, we amp up gun regulations in order to take guns from the Black Panthers, and then the NRA goes insane because they want to have guns to protect themselves from black people.
It’s like 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon, only instead of Kevin Bacon, it’s racism.
*Nominally white. I’m Jewish, and my brother suggested that, while we are European pale, we aren’t any more white than an Irish immigrant was in 1880. †For example, the right wing jihad against the courts, started with Brown v. Board of Ed, and Roe v. Wade didn’t become a cause celebre for the right wing until it became a proxy for Runyon v. McCrary, which held that private schools can be denied tax deductible status for being segregated.
Homophobes are a group of people who have a negative feeling towards homosexuality, but new research claims that people who express hatred of gays are secretly more likely to be attracted to the same sex.
Researchers from the University of Rochester, the University of Essex and the University of California in Santa Barbara have discovered that homophobes are actually attracted to the same sex but they do not admit it because they grew up with authoritarian parents who forbade such desires. They found this when they conducted a series of psychology studies.
The researchers assert that people who define themselves as straight and who hate homosexuality are often attracted to the same sex. They believe that homosexual people remind them of similar tendencies within themselves.
“Individuals who identify as straight but in psychological tests show a strong attraction to the same sex may be threatened by gays and lesbians because homosexuals remind them of similar tendencies within themselves,” said Netta Weinstein, a lecturer at the University of Essex, in a statement.
I don’t mean that he is personally homophobic, there is no evidence that I know of about that, but that he is is politically homophobic, and so is unwilling to do anything for gay rights unless absolutely forced to.
Writing an executive order mandating that federal contractors don’t discriminate is literally the least that he could do, but for Mr. Hopey Changey, it’s a bridge too far:
A surprising new rift opened between the White House and the gay rights movement after White House officials revealed Wednesday that President Obama would not sign an executive order sought by activists to prohibit federal contractors from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Community advocates learned of the news during a closed-door meeting with two top Obama aides, Valerie Jarrett and Cecilia Munoz, who told the group that the White House would instead lead a multi-pronged effort to urge companies, federal agencies and others to oppose discrimination.
The Center for American Progress, which is Obama’s bitch among the think tanks called this “Disappointing”, and the HRC, another member of the Obama knee pad set was similarly pissed off.
It appears that Obama does not remember the, “Don’t ask, Don’t Give,” efforts, but my guess is that he will:
And, just to confirm that it’s not going to go away, we got this via press release;
Within hours of the White House announcement, the “We Can’t Wait!” campaign received a $100,000 cash infusion from liberal donor Jonathan Lewis, the son of major Democratic philanthropist Peter Lewis.
Quotes from Jonathan Lewis:
“This isn’t a broken promise President Obama can blame on Congress. He has not been able to provide a single valid reason for why he is now refusing to sign the executive order protecting LGBT workers. It has become increasingly clear that this decision is based on cowardice rather than principled leadership.”
“Over the past several years the LGBT advocacy groups have jumped through hoops for this administration, conducting extensive research and polling — more than has been done for any similar executive order — and now the only impediment is President Obama.”
“This is nothing short of craven election-year politics, a game Obama told us he would not play.”
Jonathan Lewis and his father, Peter, are major contributors to progressive causes. And, by major, I mean they give millions.
Another reason to give to specific candidates, particularly in the primary, as opposed to OFA, the DNC, the DCCC, or the DSCC.
But hey, a wing of the Talibaptists at the Focus on the Family liked that he dissed the LBGT community.
Below, you can see Jay Carney saying that “more study is needed”. I guess that the unspoken assumption here is that gays are just too icky to have equal rights unless we can make bigots feel better about themselves.
Seriously, Andrew Breitbart was better on gay inclusion that Barack Obama is:
Seriously, how about not being a coward on this issue. Not being a coward gets you votes.
Open Letter to National Organization for Marriage Requesting Boycott of Law Office of Bruce Godfrey
Original Letter 3 April 2012 National Organization for Marriage Open Letter By facsimile: (888) 894-3604 Re: Request to Join Boycott List
Dear Madam or Sir:
I write your organization to request that the Law Office of Bruce Godfrey be placed on the boycott list for corporate and business advocates for the recognition of lawful civil same-sex marriage. I would be most grateful for recognition of my small law office as an opponent of your cause in Maryland as you have recognized companies such as Starbucks. While Maryland attorney ethics rules place strict prohibitions on attorney solicitations of prospective clients for hire, no ethics rules prohibit an attorney from asking to join a boycott – as a target.
Bruce Godfrey has been a loud and notorious advocate of lawful civil same-sex marriage recognition in his home state of Maryland for many years. His unapologetic advocacy of equal protection principles and of the equal rights amendment of the Maryland Declaration of Rights advocacy has cost him friendships and business relationships. Godfrey is an inveterate opponent of your cause and a strong supporter of your most implacable legislative foes in the Maryland State House and General Assembly. He earned your boycott through loud commentary on this issue as a straight ally of equal protection of the laws on Facebook alone, and will continue to advocate for equal protection of the laws in Maryland per his Maryland Attorney Oath.
It was said of the late actor Paul Newman that his proudest life achievement was being placed on the infamous “enemies short list” of President Nixon during the Watergate era. If NOM requires a certain amount of achievement in opposition to your aims to merit a boycott, please receive this as a request for the clarification of your boycott criteria so that the Law Office of Bruce Godfrey may, through diligence and honest effort, merit that honor. Please target Bruce Godfrey for boycott; he intends to earn it.
In recent weeks, a debate has been raging between leading Dems and gay rights advocates over whether the Democratic Party will make full marriage equality a plank in the party platform at the upcoming convention. Antonio Villaraigosa, the chair of the convention, recently stoked the fires when he said having such a plank would be “basic to who we are.”
But now The Huffington Post reports that Democratic National Committee officials have been privately pleading with advocates for patience on the issue, because it’s still viewed by top party officials as “politically sensitive” and potentially alienating to culturally conservative swing state Dems. HuffPo reports the DNC worries that “sweeping platform language would put the president in an awkward bind,” since President Obama is still “evolving” on gay marriage.
If Obama wanted this, it would be in there without a fight. The DNC does wipe its ass without checking with the White House. (As should be the case with a sitting President)
The tragedy here is that public opinion on this is moving blisteringly fast, and there are very few people on the wrong side of this issue who would vote Democrat.
They are dissing the base in order to pander to an electoral lost cause.
Amid cheers and camera flashes from a crush of onlookers, Gov. Martin O’Malley signed into law Thursday his bill legalizing same-sex marriage in Maryland — legislation that raises his national profile and, advocates say, gives momentum to those pushing similar measures in three states.
“The way forward is always found through greater respect for the equal rights of all,” said O’Malley, giving brief remarks before signing the legislation. “If there is a thread that unites all of our work here together, it is the thread of human dignity. … Let’s sign the bill.”
Opponents are already collecting signatures for a referendum, but I really think that they will lose the vote.
The public views on gay marriage are shifting with remarkable speed.
Dan Savaged is, of course, the genius who coined the nelogism for Santorum, “The frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex.”
Well, all I can say is that everyone in the United States named Rick is desperately hoping that he stops hating on the gay.
Next time you buy a box of Tagalongs, you might be helping to fund an abortion.
Or, at least, that’s what one Republican lawmaker in Indiana might have you believe. State Rep. Bob Morris (R) wants to kill a resolution honoring the Girl Scouts because they are a “radicalized organization” that promotes “homosexual lifestyles” and funds Planned Parenthood.
In a letter to his fellow Republicans on Saturday, Morris said he would refuse to support a resolution celebrating 100 years of the organization because “after talking to some well-informed constituents, I did a small amount of web-based research, and what I found is disturbing.”
The letter, obtained by the Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, says that the Girl Scouts of America and the World Association of Girl Guides “have entered into a close strategic affiliation with Planned Parenthood,” though “you will not find evidence of this on the GSA/WAGGGS website—in fact, the websites of these two organizations explicitly deny funding Planned Parenthood.”
Seriously, when did those guys with newspapers wrapped around their feet and standing on street corners screaming obscenities at passers by become the Republican Party mainstream?
For those who are not up on Maryland politics, Sam Arora was considered to be a politico with a great future, but he campaigned on a promise to support, and co-sponsor, a bill supporting gay marriage, and then he opposed it.
The bill passed the House of Delegates by virtue of a Republican vote delivered by the lobbying of Dick Cheney.
I’m sure he’s feeling courageous, but he’s a coward. If he had any guts, he would not have pretended to support marriage equality when he thought that there was no chance of it passing.
He campaigned on gay marriage, and when it looked like it would pass, he voted against it.
I would note that it’s likely that he’s going to have some staffing problems in the immediate future, as his his legislative director quit once he knew that he was going to vote against HB 348.
My guess is that this is the first of many departures, because if anyone on his a staff wants to have a future in politics, having Sam Arora on your resume after January 2012 will be toxic.
A bill that would legalize same-sex marriage squeaked through the House of Delegates Friday night with one more vote than the minimum needed for passage, putting Maryland on the cusp of being the eighth state to allow such unions.
Cheers erupted when the gavel dropped on the final 72-67 tally. Within minutes, Gov. Martin O’Malley, a Democrat who sponsored the bill, walked from his second-floor office to the door of the House chamber, embraced House Speaker Michael E. Busch and said, “Good job, man.”
“We are a good people. We all want the same things for our kids,” O’Malley said. Then he extended credit to delegates and activists, many of whom had been skeptical about his commitment to the issue. “These guys did it,” he said.
The measure now goes to the Senate, which passed a similar bill last year and is expected do so again. The chamber will likely take up the measure next week.
Should the bill pass in both chambers, activists on both sides believe it would be petitioned to referendum in November. If voters approve the measure, the earliest a gay couple would be able to wed is January 2013, when the law would go into effect.
The victory is significant for O’Malley, who threw the weight of his office behind the measure after a similar bill fell a few votes short in the House last year. The governor had been working the halls of the House office building at all hours to persuade wavering delegates.
In national terms, the Maryland vote caps a week in which proponents of same-sex marriage have scored significant victories with the signing of a similar law in Washington state and the Legislature’s approval of a marriage bill in New Jersey, though Gov. Chris Christie vetoed it Friday.
This is very good news, because it passed the state Senate last year, so it looks like it will make it to the Governor’s desk.
One weird bit: One of the people that we have to thank for this is Dick Cheney:
By far the biggest boost came in the morning when Republican Del. Wade Kach, who was considered a sure-fire no vote, threw his support behind O’Malley’s bill. Kach had voted against the bill two days earlier in committee.
The Baltimore County delegate said he reached his decision after mulling the testimony he’d heard during a nearly 11-hour hearing on the bill last week and watching how same-sex couples supported one another. “I thought to myself, if my constituents were here, they’d have a different perspective on the issue,” Kach said. “I’m sure of it.”
He also became the target of a last-minute lobby effort, and said his voice mail was full of messages from important people, including Mehlman, Bloomberg and an offer to talk with former Vice President Dick Cheney, whom Kach regards as a “great man.” All three are recognized for their support of gay rights issues.
But you know, I’ll take it.
That being said, there are still enough bigots in Maryland to put this on the ballot, and it’s probably gonna be close.
“Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently,” Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt wrote in the decision. “There was no such reason that Proposition 8 could have been enacted.”
“All that Proposition 8 accomplished was to take away from same-sex couples the right to be granted marriage licenses and thus legally to use the designation ‘marriage,’ ” the judge wrote, adding, “Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gay men and lesbians in California.”
BTW, all three judges agreed that the defendants request that the judge Vaughn Walker recuse himself was pretty much a crock of sh%$.
The precedent on this case is fairly straightforward, the Supreme Court ruling on Colorado’s Amendment 2 about 15 years ago, where they said that voters can’t strip rights from a group just because they make them feel squicky, the so-called “rational basis” test.
The question now is whether or not this case goes to the full appeals court (en banc), or to the Supreme Court.
And while we are on recusals. Seeing as how Scalia has publicly, and repeatedly, made comments explicitly stating that he has pre-judged the matter, how about he recuse his flabby ass from the case?
If SCOTUS takes it, it will be closer though, as O’Connor has been replaced by Alito, who is an almost certain vote against gay civil rights.
The verbal feud over gay marriage in New Jersey got more personal Monday with Gov. Chris Christie firing a slang term [numb nuts] at a lawmaker, and a hero of the Civil Rights movement chastising the governor for a separate remark.
………
The issue also brought U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia to Trenton on Monday to take Christie to task for comments linking gay marriage to the civil rights struggle of the 1960s.
Christie last week vowed to veto any gay marriage bill that reaches his desk. He instead called for the question to be put to voters in November.
“I think people would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights, rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South,” Christie said after an event in Central Jersey.
Black leaders pounced. Newark Mayor Cory Booker said baseball great Jackie Robinson would not have had the opportunity to break the sport’s color barrier had the matter been put to a vote, and the mayor himself would not have had the opportunity, years later, to be elected to lead New Jersey’s largest city. Assembly Speaker Sheila Oliver said many felt the sting of Christie’s comment.
Gusciora, who is white, said Christie would have found allies in late Alabama Gov. George Wallace and late Georgia Gov. Lester Maddox, both segregationists.
This is what qualifies as a deep thought by the ‘Phants.
A Navy tradition caught up with the repeal of the U.S. military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” rule on Wednesday when two women sailors became the first to share the coveted “first kiss” on the dock after one of them returned from 80 days at sea.
Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta of Placerville, Calif., descended from the USS Oak Hill amphibious landing ship and shared a quick kiss with her partner, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell of Los Angeles. The crowd screamed and waved flags around them.
Both women, ages 22 and 23 respectively, are fire controlmen in the Navy. They met at training school and have been dating for two years.
Navy officials said it was the first time on record that a same-sex couple was chosen to kiss first upon a ship’s return. Sailors and their loved ones bought $1 raffle tickets for the opportunity. Gaeta said she bought $50 of tickets. The Navy said the money would be used to host a Christmas party for the children of sailors.
This just in, a new study has shown that 
The latest target of their mishugas? Why it’s the 
