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Rodney Moore – hmm, where to begin. 1, yes I am gay.
2, I have studied the history of marriage, so, please do me a favor and read up on it sometime, you would be amazed. Or if you don’t have time, ask a SCA member some know the basics of the history of it.
3, You do realize that UK gay unions are just that, not marriage. WOW, they have a major problem with that don’t they…
4, That ALL marriages ARE Civil Unions, you get your license from City Hall NOT the church. So if we get Civil Unions instead of “Marriage”, its STILL the same thing. Even as you put it “civil institution of marriage”. It is NOT “Creating a redundant and needless institution”.
5, Your the type that is actually holding back the cause by not bending and going after Marriage and not wanting to settle on anything else.
So, your saying that if DOMA is killed, and 1100+ benefits are added to “Civil Unions” where you can still say My Husband/My Wife, you would still have a problem with that because of a word??? I mean if you say that this is my Husband, are people then going to say “which, Civil or Marriage?”, don’t think so, they will see a Husband.
Is it possible to have Gay Marriages, sure, but not for a very long time.

And I will NOT “Do us all a favor, shut the fuck up.”, I am out there at all the rally’s, donating to the ORG’s fighting for our rights every chance I get, volunteering when I can with my other half. How about you?

“And you want to impose your own low self respect on all gay people?!?” – really, you know this how? It’s called being a realist. Please, go get a job with lawyers and politicians, then keep your eyes and hears open to all the fun they have. You will learn it is baby steps to your goal not sprinting. Esp when the majority of the people around you HATE you. And speaking of the black fights from history, please go talk to someone old enough to remember those times, and the story’s they heard from their grandparents. It took a very long time for the black community to get where it is today. or am I forgetting anything between Abraham to the 1960′s? And before you go off, I am a white male that went to a majority black school, where you could count the white kids on one hand, out of thousands.

Hawk- You are a goddamned idiot. Opposition to marriage equality is opposition to one of the most basic and human of civil rights. You are a self hating homosexual who would happily accept being called Yankee Pot Roasted, as long as your “rights” are respected. And you want to impose your own low self respect on all gay people?!? Question, would Obama like it if black people couldn’t marry. Perhaps we can call it, Baby’s Momma Shaking up with her Baby’s Daddy or Fried Chicken? As long as they have rights, who cares!?!?! Hey, separate but equal worked SO well for blacks in America, who cares if they got to take a sh*t on a white toilet or drink from a white fountain, why did they get hung up on using “white stuff”. Marriage is not just a word, it’s not semantics, it entails rights, liberties and responsibilities on the state, federal, city, county, parish and international level. Creating a redundant and needless institution just to keep gay people shut out of a civil institution of marriage, is complete and utter bullsh*t. People like you, if you are gay, are the reason our community is being held back. Do us all a favor, shut the fuck up.

Alan Katz- Also, people like you who ride on the coattails of the movement, instead of actually doing anything need to likewise shut the f*ck up. The second people on this blog “get off [Obama's]back” is when Obama will do absolutely nothing for our community. Thomas Jefferson said that our Republic takes participation, you are spending your fucking time bashing people who are pushing for progress instead of advocating progress. If people like you would spend more time pushing FOR gay rights, instead of wasting your time telling us how perfect Obama(or Clinton or Kerry) is, maybe we’d be leading the free world on the issue of gay rights instead of being passed up by the likes of Nepal and South Africa.

Dave W- With all due respect to Third Parties and especially our Libertarian/Lesbotarian friends. The Libertarian Party has crazy ideas when it comes to marriage. They want to “privatize” marriage, which is pretty stupid if you ask me. Marriage is by definition a civil contract, and the idea of privatizing it is about as lame as the idea of privatizing passports or drivers licenses. The Libertarian Party has a position on the issuing of passports, they believe that as long as passports are issued, the US government should issue them to whoever is in the US and pays the fee. Even though they, by principle endorse free movement, they recognize that a passport infers rights of travel. Yet on the issue of marriage, given that they fear pissing off the more conservative crowd, they take an unprincipled position on the issue. If the Libertarian Party had a position on marriage, much like their position on drivers licenses and passports, that the government should issue marriage licenses to couples regardless of gender, sex and sexual orientation then I could have seen gays voting Libertarian. Instead, however, the Libertarian party has become less civilly libertarian and more obsessed with complete deregulation of the market and pot legalization. These are narrow interests.

John- Speaking of profiles in courage. I am reading this book as we speak. I just finished the chapter on John Quincy Adams. Obama had enough charisma, enough black voters who would have voted for him even if he ate barbecued kittens at a Halliburton shareholders meeting, enough guilty white voters and enough progressive whites behind him that he could have supported marriage equality vocally and still won. Yet he didn’t even have the courage to stand up and do that, even when he had momentum and popular support. Profiles in courage documents extreme cases of when statesmen put their own states or partisan interests aside and stood up on an issue, which in the end cost them. Obama would have paid a small price for supporting marriage equality but he would NOT have lost this election because of it.

The issue of Rick Warren is more symbolic than substance. However, Rick Warren is the feather which broke the camel’s back. Putting his Holiness Gene Robinson in whatever symbolic position he’s in, does NO good for gay and lesbian Americans on the street. Having a gay person in the cabinet is likewise symbolic.

All the promises Obama has made are yet to be fulfilled and from all we keep hearing from 365gay.com, Southern Voice, Washington Blade and CNN is that his administration is placing less and less importance on our issues. Progressive and liberal groups and think tanks, outside of our community, are also disillusioned with his backpedaling on his promises of substantial “change”. There is a huge difference between his campaign rhetoric and speeches and his actual platform stances and his administration’s policies. He seems to be resurrecting the old has-beens of the Clintonista era more than bringing “change”. Why the hell should gays and lesbians not believe what we’re seeing, when everyone else is seeing the same? The differences between Bush, McCain and Obama are more about rhetoric and style as opposed to policy. Gay and lesbian people aren’t the only ones being disappointed. We’re just the only “special interest” whose lives are DIRECTLY effected by the Obama Administration’s lack of substantial policy change.

I hope that he gives the United States the oportunity a spending re-birth. Gay weddings, cruises, trip, second homes, etc., help to stimulate the economy and create jobs. In a plummeting economy, this can’t be a bad thing!

Hawk–”all the benefits without the name.” Uh, no, not with DOMA, and it would still be challenged in court because it approximates marriage. Under US law, there’s that little concept that got thrown out. Separate but equal. If Log Cabin ever had any balls, they would’ve argued that DOMA is a basic violation of contract law and therefore an unreasonable restraint of trade. Trust and believe, Hawk, that if a category is created which is parallel to another one, the second one will be challenged because it duplicates the first one. So no Federal civil unions, because that’s a black-letter constitutional violation. Even Clarence Thomas would have to agree.

Daniel S, I pointed out Obama’s half-blackness to make a point: it doesn’t make him a demigod, but it makes him much more of a hypocrite to think that my “expectations” are any more up for “management” than were those of anybody black in US history. Moreover, “black” in the US has always been a continuum; in the North you could perhaps escape blackness if you were light enough, but in Louisiana in 1980s, you were “black” if you were 1/64th black. South Africa cut to the chase and created the category of Coloureds to accomodate those who were mixed. Like Theresa Heinz Kerry, Obama is African and European. He’s not “black” in the sense of any of the characters in “The Color Purple.” That’s not a racist distinction, it’s a socio-cultural one, and it matters.

I’m an American who wants equality under the law. It doesn’t matter if I don’t get it before I die. It matters that people like Barack Obama are cognitively aware of the ethical and legal disparity of the status quo, but Obama would rather stick with the “possible” and screw me over than tell me flat-out that me and my kind aren’t electorally important enough to stand up for. Time will tell what happens. As for the Lincoln reference, see Lyndon Johnson–sometimes people have done the right thing even though it wasn’t what they personally believed. THAT’s courage.

I’ll offer this parallel. When Pinochet took power in Chile, it was at a time when most South American countries were leaning into some very destructive leftist-populist economic policies. Chile was the only one that didn’t follow that path, and it’s proven a far more stable economy in the post-Pinochet years. Stable economy often allows for the luxury of a democracy with differing opinions and press freedom. So if Chile hadn’t had Pinochet, their economy and social imbalance would probably be like the rest of the continent, but instead Chile has a middle class because of a brutal military dictator. Was it worth it? If Obama manages to steer this country out of this economic mess, is it with the quid pro quo of giving up on gays being equal under US law? If jobs and wealth for the majority justify denying rights to specific groups, who decides which groups are denied?

The difficulty I have with Obama is that there’s insufficient result to back up his claim of being a “fierce advocate” for equality for gays.

So far, it’s mostly just a bunch of words. Sure, he’s named a couple people to high posts (but no Cabinet post, what a surprise), but let’s see if they get confirmed, and how they’re supported if—hopefully when—they move to make treatment of gays more equal.

It’ll be great if Obama actually does turn out to be a good friend of our community, but he’s already shown his willingness to throw us under the bus for political reasons.

All props to Bishop Robinson, but his won’t be the televised speech that millions, if not billions around the world, will watch in conjunction with the swearing-in. Rick Warren’s will be.

Funny, but I don’t recall Bishop Robinson saying anything about taking away straight people’s rights, or infering straights are incestuous pedophiles. Probably has something to do with that whole ‘do unto others’ thing.