Obama’s Doublespeak on ‘Gay Marriage’

Democratic deception worked: most ignorant about Obama’s radical anti-DOMA agenda

Obama hagiography courtesy of the left-leaning Rolling Stone. It seems that many people who voted for Obama had no idea of his radical positions on abortion and “gay marriage.” Click on image to enlarge.

The following column first appeared on the Republicans For Family Values website and ran toward the end of the campaign. It seems as if the Obama camp did an effective job of hiding their candidate’s radical social agenda. Since Obama’s election victory, I have conducted an informal survey by asking several people who voted for the Democrat if they knew of his position on two critical “culture war” issues: his call to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and his pledge to sign the pro-abortion “Freedom of Choice Act.” Not one Obama voter I have spoken with (about 10) had any clue of either stance, and most were surprised to learn of both. (Try this experiment on your friends and coworkers.) This does not necessarily mean that they would have voted against Obama had they known, but it does suggest that Obama can claim no popular mandate from the election to press forward on these radical goals. Perhaps I overstated the effect (as some AFTAH friends suggested), but here’s a piece I wrote suggesting that John McCain could have fared better by not downplaying these social issues: “McCain Lost because He Failed to Expose Obama’s Far Left Record on Abortion and Homosexual ‘Marriage.’” — Peter LaBarbera

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Obama is For ‘Gay Marriage’ even as He’s Against it

By Peter LaBarbera

As a social conservative, one of the most troubling aspects of [the recent] presidential campaign has been the media’s (and John McCain’s) failure to flesh out Barack Obama’s “audacious” doublespeak on the issue of same-sex “marriage.”

Here’s the question Obama was lucky enough to have never been asked in this campaign: What does it mean to say you support traditional marriage (one man, one woman) – when you do so much to advance the pro-“gay marriage” cause, including denouncing state marriage-protection amendments like Prop 8 in California as “discriminatory and divisive”?

Did you know that Obama has promised homosexual activists that he will work to fully repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act? DOMA was signed into law by Bill Clinton in 1996 and protects states from being forced to recognize out-of-state “gay marriages.” It was passed overwhelmingly by the Senate, 85-14, with Sen. Biden joining 28 other Democrats in voting yes. How liberal is Obama’s anti-DOMA scheme? Hillary Clinton, a trusted gay ally, pledged to repeal only part of DOMA.

Neither McCain nor Gov. Palin has made an issue of Obama’s extreme anti-DOMA sop to the homosexual crowd even though they had a clear opening. (One 2007 Quinnipiac poll revealed that a homosexual group’s endorsement of a candidate would be a net electoral loser among voters in Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania.) The result is that Obama’s DOMA Destruction Plan never surfaced in the debates and barely in the major media.

The Democratic spin on marriage has fooled a lot of voters. If you watched the presidential debates, including the Saddleback Church event with Pastor Rick Warren, you might have concluded that Obama and his running mate, Joe Biden, pretty much agree with McCain and Gov. Sarah Palin on same-sex “marriage.”

That is a precisely what the savvy strategists at the Obama/Biden campaign want you to think, as they strive to hide their candidates’ radical pro-gay agenda and portray themselves as reasonable moderates on this wedge issue. Truth is, the gulf between the tickets is the difference between saying you support marriage and actually doing something to protect it – and NOT favoring policies like repealing DOMA that are completely in line with the homosexual activists’ goal of radically redefining this sacred institution.

McCain is a strong DOMA supporter who will embrace a Federal Marriage Amendment if he sees activist judges forcing “gay marriage” on the states. Obama, on the other hand, went from supporting DOMA in 2004 to calling it “abhorrent” as part of his radical promise to homosexual groups to overturn it. Obama is setting the stage for nationalizing “same-sex “marriage” (perhaps under the guise of “civil unions”), while reporters dutifully provide him cover by repeating his alleged opposition to same.

If only one major media reporter would ask Sen. Obama: how can you say you support traditional marriage and yet “abhor” a popular law (DOMA) that helps states to preserve it? Alas, we mere mortals have to choose sides – and most politicians flip and then flop — but apparently Obama, The One, is allowed to embrace both sides of an issue simultaneously and get away with it.

Consider the following Obama policies and rhetoric and ask yourself if this sounds like a man who supports traditional marriage:

• Obama congratulated homosexual activists for “getting married” at a San Francisco Democratic gay event;
• Though Obama says he “personally” opposes “gay marriage,” he creates a distinction without a difference by supporting federal “civil unions.” Obama told the nation’s leading homoseuxal lobby group: “I believe civil unions should include the same legal rights that accompany a marriage license.” Interestingly, this stance has led Obama to support a bill to allow homosexual partners to immigrate to the United States just like married spouses;
• Obama promises gay activists that he will use the bully pulpit to advocate for homosexual adoption of children. Thus Americans may have to endure the absurd spectacle of a President Obama using the prestige of the White House to defend placing children in homes that are motherless or fatherless by design;
• Obama said he “respects” the California supreme court’s 4-3 decision earlier this year forcing “gay marriage” on that state, even though it wiped out a previous statewide ballot vote by Californians to preserve marriage as between a man and a woman;
• Obama denounced the Federal Marriage Amendment as a mere “political ploy”;
• Obama dismisses a key passage in the New Testament Book of Romans and distorts Jesus Christ’s Sermon on the Mount to justify his pro-homosexuality agenda.

Considering the above, is it asking too much of the media to stop repeating the distortion that Obama and Biden support traditional marriage?

Appearing on the Ellen DeGeneres show, Sen. Biden eagerly told Ellen, a “gay-marriage” activist, that if he were a California voter he would vote “no” on Prop 8 in California. How strange, since Prop 8 does nothing but reinstate the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. (It does not affect same-sex “domestic partners,” who already receive the same benefits as married couples under California law.) Of course, earlier, in the vice-presidential debate, Biden claimed to oppose gay “marriage” — creating the false impression that he and Palin essentially agree on the same-sex-“marriage” question.

John McCain blew it by not calling out his opponents on their “gay marriage” deception and their plans to do in DOMA. All he needed to say was that the Illinois Senator doesn’t have the guts to tell the truth — that Obama’s “personal” opposition to “gay marriage” is meaningless because his pro-gay pledges would greatly advance the spread of homosexual “marriage” across the land. With friends like Obama and Biden, McCain could have said, the beleaguered institution of marriage really doesn’t need enemies.
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Peter LaBarbera is founder and president of Americans For Truth about Homosexuality and Republicans For Family Values (www.rffv.org).