I used to think that America was a progressive country. The visceral reaction to President Obama finally coming out in support of gay marriage has me wondering though. What year is this anyway, 1912 or 2012?
If you want to get depressed go take a look at news sites comment sections and watch your neighbors rant on about this simple human rights position. It’s not what you think either, that these people are from backwoods places or are not your neighbors. There are comments from all over the country, from LA to Baltimore and St. Paul, Minnesota to Dallas, Texas. Sometimes we live in a bubble and we think that there is no way that people still think like this today. Unfortunately we have a long way to go.
To me and most of the people I know this issue is simple. Replace the word gay with the word black and it is simple to see how stupid it is and what a human rights issue it is.
There are a lot of Obama’s policies that can be intellectually argued for or against.
This is not one of them.
It’s not even a policy, but a personal opinion. On policy, Obama believes it’s a states right issue which is a strict constitutionalist view. His policy view is actually more in line with what Republicans believe than it is with traditional Democrat views.
This is what we are down to now in this country. If a President who you don’t agree with states a personal position you should agree with you have to attack him anyway based not on policy, but on some ideology.
People should take a step back and look at history. Our rhetoric is much like the German and Italian rhetoric that led to the rise of power of men like Hitler and Mussolini. The reason both men gained power in the early parts of the last century was the fear engendered by the political and economic upheavals in both countries.
Sound familiar?
