The New York Times on the immediate blowback from the President's own inner circle of faith leaders:
About two hours after declaring his support for same-sex marriage last week, President Obama gathered eight or so African-American ministers on a conference call to explain himself. He had struggled with the decision, he said, but had come to believe it was the right one.
The ministers, though, were not all as enthusiastic. A vocal few made it clear that the president's stand on gay marriage might make it difficult for them to support his re-election.
... In the hours following Mr. Obama's politically charged announcement on Wednesday, the president and his team embarked on a quiet campaign to contain the possible damage among religious leaders and voters. He also reached out to one or more of the five spiritual leaders he calls regularly for religious guidance, and his aides contacted other religious figures who have been supportive in the past.
The damage-control effort underscored the anxiety among Mr. Obama's advisers about the consequences of the president's revised position just months before what is expected to be a tight re-election vote. While hailed by liberals and gay-rights leaders for making a historic breakthrough, Mr. Obama recognized that much of the country is uncomfortable with or opposed to same-sex marriage, including many in his own political coalition.
Governor Hickenlooper has called a special legislative session to address civil union legislation, and Colorado Family Action is hosting a Rally for Marriage at the State Capitol in Denver tomorrow! Please make an effort to come to the Capitol over the lunch hour tomorrow to show your support for marriage.
As recently as 2006, the people of Colorado voted to reject civil unions and affirm marriage. Now Governor Hickenlooper is trying to pressure the legislature to pass this dangerous bill.
This is exactly the sort of bill that courts in California and Connecticut used to demonstrate that the state no longer had any justification for marriage—concluding that civil unions were an unconstitutional and discriminatory "separate but equal" status.
Your legislators need to hear from you tomorrow! Please join Colorado Family Action and make a powerful statement at the Capitol tomorrow!
WHAT:
RALLY & PRAYER FOR MARRIAGE
WHEN:
TUESDAY, MAY 15th, 2012
WHERE:
WEST STATE CAPITOL STEPS (200 E COLFAX AVE, DENVER 80203)
TIME:
12 NOON-1PM
Please, marriage is fundamental to our society, and this civil unions bill represents a serious threat to the future of our marriage laws. Please do whatever you can to free up an hour tomorrow afternoon.
Just days after President Barack Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage, pastors and priests around Maryland took to their own pulpits with their reaction– and in some cases– condemnation of the president.
... When Obama announced that his position on same-sex marriage had evolved, it outraged some African-American pastors like Pastor and Del. Emmett Burns.
“He has said to his base, African-Americans, ‘I am going against your beliefs and your thoughts,’” Burns said.
He’s so opposed to same-sex marriage, he told church members he will no longer support the president and now predicts Obama will lose the election because of it.
He and many other leaders are pouring their energies into gathering the signatures needed to put Maryland’s same-sex marriage law on the November ballot.
“I think it might be a call to action for people to really express what they believe,” Father Erik Arnold of Our Lady of Perpetual Help said.
... In Maryland, some of the strongest opposition to the law has come from the black community– about 30 percent of the population. Some African-American religious leaders are preaching about it.
President Obama’s headline-grabbing flip-flop on gay marriage may cost him dearly in the more religious parts of the black community, reports CNN today, as pastors tell their congregations the president is wrong in stepping in. In a report on the divide over social issues in the black community, Athena Jones speakers to Rev. Dr.Emmett Burns, who insists that, while he and his peregrines won’t support Mitt Romney, they have no interest in going to the polls.
Jones reports that, while some pastors, like Rev. Wallace Charles Smith, support the President with the caveat that “we preferred that he had not weighed in on the issue,” Rev. Burns (also a state legislator) has no interest in voting this year. “People have come up to me, are saying they don’t support this, they don’t like this,” he argued. “They are disappointed with the President, and they plan to stay home.”
More on the Campaign to Re-elect the President's efforts to demonize and punish their political opponents, via Daniel Halper at The Weekly Standard:
Businessman Frank Vandersloot, the CEO of Melaleuca, has been targeted by the Obama campaign after donating money to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. "Three weeks ago, an Obama campaign website, 'Keeping GOP Honest,' took the extraordinary step of publicly naming and assailing eight private citizens backing Mr. Romney," Kim Strassel of the Wall Street Journal reported. "Titled 'Behind the curtain: a brief history of Romney's donors,' the post accused the eight of being 'wealthy individuals with less-than-reputable records.' Mr. VanderSloot was one of the eight, smeared particularly as being 'litigious, combative and a bitter foe of the gay rights movement.'"
The attacks are working. Vandersloot revealed in an interview on Fox News that his business practice is being hurt by the attacks from the Obama team.
"Those people that I know well weren't affected by this [attack]," said Vandersloot. "But for people who didn't know me, who are members of our business or customers, and they were reading this, then we got a barrage of phone calls of people cancelling their customer memberships with us."
"Really?," the Fox News host asked. "How many did that?"
"A couple hundred that we can track," Vandersloot replied.
Again, the host asked, "Really? Do you have any grounds to sue?"
"I suppose we do," Vandersloot said. The businessman says he's been accused of being anti-gay, an accusation he says that couldn't be further from the truth.
Bill Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, on the choice facing Americans this November:
"...Will victory in November guarantee prevailing over the long run? Aren’t the defenders of the traditional family—or as we would have it, the defenders of the family—destined to be swamped by the modern tidal waves of individual choice and sexual liberation? Possibly. In the civilizational struggle of an earlier generation, Whittaker Chambers thought he was leaving the winning side to join the losing side in the battle against communism. But you never know how history will turn out, as Chambers, once liberated from Marxist determinism, would have reminded us.
All one can ask is the chance to make one’s case. All the American people can ask is the chance to decide, rather than having an answer imposed on them by social or judicial elites. Thanks to Vice President Joe Biden, who spurred President Obama to stop “evolving” and to come forward and state his views like a man, there will be a clear choice this November between the candidates and the parties on the issue of marriage. Defenders of traditional marriage need to speak now, or forever hold their peace."
Team Obama “named and shamed” eight private citizens for donating to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, The Blaze reported two weeks ago.
Frank VanderSloot, one of the eight men detailed by the president’s “Truth Team,” is discovering what it means to be on a president’s “enemies list.”
VanderSloot has run a wellness-products company called Melaleuca Inc. out of Idaho Falls, ID, for the last 26 years, the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley A. Strassel reports. By all accounts, it’s a healthy and prosperous company — something of a rarity in this current economy. But that doesn’t matter to certain members of “Team Obama.” VanderSloot gave $1 million to the pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future and that was enough to land him a spot on the enemies list.
... And as for VanderSloot, he is a “litigious, combative and a bitter foe of the gay rights movement,” the site claims.
Yesterday was, of course, Mother's Day, and the Human Rights Campaign decided to "celebrate" it by calling on mothers across the country to "unite" against NOM by uploading this photo to their Facebook profile:
HRC also gave 10 reasons for why they think Moms should unite against NOM, but I'd like to give you just the personal reason I support NOM: Because I am so grateful to have been raised by mom and know from that experience how she loves me the way only a mom can.
Gay marriage -- and HRC -- deny that a mother's love is unique and special. Why on earth would moms, who know how much their kids need them, want to support an organization like HRC which is dedicated to the idea that moms are replaceable and dispensable. Talk about a paradox.
Anyway, a very happy belated mother's day to all the moms across America -- especially the 500,000 or so moms (by my rough guess) who voted to protect marriage between a man and a woman last week in North Carolina! You rock!
This new CBS News poll is a good reminder that, when given the option of civil unions, only 38% of Americans support redefining marriage. This is similar to the Alliance Defense Fund's polling which found that 62% of Americans believe marriage should be defined only as a union between one man and one woman:
Newsweek isn’t going to let Time win without a fight.
In the battle for most controversial cover of the week, Newsweek fired back at Time magazine’s now-infamous breastfeeding mom image by putting President Barack Obama under a rainbow halo with the tagline "The First Gay President."
"Obama's earned every stripe in this haloed rainbow,” Newsweek’s editor-in-chief Tina Brown wrote on Twitter.
Last week, Obama officially announced his support for same-sex marriage, becoming the first sitting president in U.S. history to do so.
"I've just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married," Obama told ABC News.
The cover story, written by openly gay Newsweek contributor Andrew Sullivan, has yet to be released in full, but the magazine posted an excerpt on why the writer believes the president's move to support same-sex marriage was not just a political ploy.
"...History is littered with the wreckage of causes pronounced inevitable by all right-thinking people. The failed Equal Rights Amendment looked inevitable when it passed Congress in 1972 and immediately 30 states ratified it. Opposition to abortion that was supposed to inevitably wither away is as robust as ever. The forces favoring gun control seemed unstoppably on the march when Congress passed the Brady Bill and the assault-weapons ban in the 1990s, but there are more protections for gun rights now than two decades ago.
Gay marriage’s inevitability hasn’t been evident to the voters in 31 states who have written into their constitutions that marriage is between a man and a woman. The latest is North Carolina, where 61 percent of voters embraced the traditional definition of marriage in a referendum. North Carolina isn’t Mississippi. President Obama won North Carolina in 2008, and Democrats are holding their convention there. Nation-wide, no referendum simply upholding traditional marriage has ever lost, and even in Maine, voters in 2009 reversed a gay-marriage law passed by the legislature.
... There’s no doubt that supporters of gay marriage have made progress, but they shouldn’t congratulate themselves yet. Their cause is still subject to events, such as President Obama’s fate this fall. If the president’s newly frank support for gay marriage costs him crucial swing states, his coming-out party will be seen — inevitably — as more a setback to the cause than a watershed.
As we wrote last week, Obama's support of SSM puts almost every Democrat running in a conservative state in a tough position, according to The Hill:
Senate Democrats facing difficult reelections are breaking with President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage, a sign the issue is politically dangerous in battleground states.
Sens. Jon Tester (Mont.) and Claire McCaskill (Mo.), the two most vulnerable Democratic senators, have declined to endorse Obama’s call for the legalization of gay marriage.
Sens. Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Bob Casey (Pa.) and Bill Nelson (Fla.), Democrats who have easier races but in states that could become more competitive by November, have also backed away from Obama’s stance.
They all represent states with constitutional amendments or laws banning same-sex marriage.
... The exception is Rep. Sherrod Brown (D) who faces a stiff challenge in Ohio, where outside groups have spent more than $5 million on ads to defeat him.
Brown issued a strong statement siding with Obama, even though his home state has a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
The New York Times tries to make the case but the facts are pathetically against them:
Last weekend, former President Bill Clinton took to North Carolina phone lines with a recorded message warning of the perils of a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and civil unions. “What it will change is North Carolina’s ability to keep good businesses, attract new jobs, and attract and keep talented entrepreneurs,” Mr. Clinton asserted. “If it passes, your ability to keep those businesses, get those jobs and get those talented entrepreneurs will be weakened.”
That argument landed with a thud, as North Carolina voters resoundingly supported the amendment by a margin of 20 percentage points, and 93 of the state’s 100 counties voted for the proposition that marriage is exclusively between a man and a woman.
... Mr. Clinton’s message that constitutional bans on same-sex marriage are bad for business hardly seems self-evident. North Carolina is perennially ranked at or near the top of the best states in which to do business. Two of its major rivals for the top honor, Texas and Virginia, also have constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriages and civil unions, and Virginia even bans “any marriagelike contract” between unmarried persons. New York and Massachusetts, both tolerant of same-sex marriage, usually rank at or near the bottom of states in which to do business.
Twenty-three percent of independent voters are less likely to vote for Barack Obama because of his announcement that he supports same-sex marriage, according to a Gallup/USA Todaypoll. Eleven percent are more likely. There might also be a slight shift in how Democrats and Republicans are inclined to vote: while only 2 percent of Republicans say that Obama’s decision makes them more likely to vote for him, 10 percent of Democrats say they’re less likely to back Obama.
NOM co-founder Maggie Gallagher is interviewed by Lila Shapiro about how Obama's marriage flip-flop will affect the Presidential race:
What was your first reaction when you heard the president say that he thought that same-sex couples should be able to get married?
Relieved. Lying to the American people to get elected is always wrong, so it's good he's come clean on the issue.
Do you think this is a turning point in the debate over marriage?
In the debate? No. In the elections? Quite possibly yes. President Obama probably just did something for Mitt Romney that Romney was having a hard time doing for himself: consolidate his support among evangelicals.
Plus he just put himself on the wrong side of 61 percent of voters in North Carolina, a key swing state. The cheers of Hollywood and Manhattan are not going to be that helpful come November. I do believe he was pushed by his gay donor base to do this.
He chose the money over the voters. We'll see how that turns out in November.
