"Just how much of an issue gay marriage will be was not clear."
It is for this voter: none at all
"President Obama’s decision to publicly support same-sex marriage comes amid a furious fund-raising battle with Republican Mitt Romney and has the potential to generate significant contributions from wealthy gays and lesbians and take the place of Wall Street donors who backed the president in 2008 but have become disaffected this year, according to campaign analysts and Obama supporters."
Related: President Obama backs same-sex marriage
On gay marriage, Obama is on the right side of history
Yah, he's doing it for all the right rea$on$.
"Obama’s senior strategists, confronting the prospect of a close election, are loath to raise a subject that could cost votes on balance in swing states like Virginia, North Carolina, and Colorado, say Democrats familiar with their thinking.
Yet Obama risks alienating gay Americans who have been among his strongest supporters and biggest donors, and same-sex marriage is strongly supported among many of the young and college-educated voters whom the campaign courts.
Another sliver of a segment of the population that for zome reason has outsized influence.
And those youth, they don't vote. That's what I'm told by my MSM officiator of ceremonies when it comes to Ron Paul's alleged failure to win votes, primaries, etc, etc, etc.
But it is opposed by socially conservative blacks, particularly politically influential ministers, whose strong turnout Obama needs.
I think other concern$ override that, don't you?
At the same time, some Democrats say that Obama, by continuing to straddle an issue that many supporters and gay activists believe he privately favors, risks looking politically calculating, even cynical.
It's the same way he's treated everyone else, so don't take it personally.
And how about that double entendre, huh?
The heightened focus on gay rights issues in Washington came as voters in North Carolina prepared to vote Tuesday on a proposed amendment to the state’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage, and as Colorado advocates of civil unions sought to push a measure recognizing such unions through the state Legislature before a Wednesday deadline.
Related: North Carolina strengthens gay marriage prohibition
Both states figure prominently in Obama’s reelection calculation.
--more--"
What started it all:
"Biden apologizes to Obama for timing on gay marriage
Well, actually, it's worked out well, so it wasn't really a goof, was it?
WASHINGTON - Vice President Joe Biden has apologized to President Obama for comments that led the president to speed up his public acknowledgement of his support for gay marriage, according to a person familiar with the exchange.
Obama and Biden spoke Wednesday, shortly before the president discussed his views on gay marriage in a television interview, the source said. Biden expressed his regret for speaking out about his own support for same-sex marriage before the president.
The person familiar with the exchange says that Obama said he understood that Biden was speaking from the heart.
--more--"
I'm getting cold feet, folks.
"Same-sex marriage distant dream for many worldwide" by Leon Drouin-Keith | Associated Press, May 11, 2012
BANGKOK - China’s government considered homosexuality a mental disorder until 2001. Mobs in Senegal have disinterred bodies of men they believe were gay and dragged them through the streets. In Egypt, laws prohibiting “shameless public acts’’ have been used to imprison gay men.
While gay-rights activists hailed President Obama’s support for same-sex marriage as a symbolic victory, for many around the world the idea of legal unions between homosexuals is a distant dream. Gay people in many countries would settle for simply getting to be themselves without fear of being attacked or thrown in prison.
In China, “the government treats homosexuality like it does not
exist,’’ said Xiong Jing, an activist who volunteers in gay support
groups in Beijing.
“If he, as president, was able to not just express his own personal opinion but to support policies on this, that would be even better,’’ she said Thursday.
America’s role as a global agent of change is exactly what worries people like Ibrahim Ali, an independent member of Malaysia’s Parliament and leader of a rights group for the country’s majority Malay Muslims.
“They can practice this in America if they want, since it’s their right, but we are still very concerned, because whatever America practices, it often wants other countries to follow suit,’’ he said.
The Vatican, a strident opponent of gay marriage, did not immediately comment on Obama’s announcement. But two months ago Pope Benedict XVI denounced what he called the gay marriage lobby in America in a speech to visiting US bishops and urged them not to back down in the face of “powerful political and cultural currents seeking to alter the legal definition of marriage.’’
Gee, I wonder who he could be talking about.
Of course, the pooper-pumping perverts may the wrong ones to be delivering that sermon, 'eh?
On Thursday at the Vatican, visiting Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin said the church’s teaching on the sanctity of marriage between man and woman was clear, unchangeable, and dates from the biblical account of Adam and Eve in the book of Genesis....
With the exception of South Africa, much of Africa harbors a deep stigma against homosexuality. Violence has been rising against gays in the continent, and there have been cases of mobs digging up bodies from cemeteries in Senegal, allegedly of homosexuals, and parading them in the streets.
“I really like Barack Obama as a president, but not this latest declaration,’’ said Mohamed Gueye, who sells Obama pencils alongside French conjugation guides at his bookstall in the Sandaga market in Dakar, the Senegalese capital.
Gladys Okai of Ghana was attacked for being a lesbian....
Homosexuality also remains taboo in India, despite large gay pride parades recently. Only this year, the government accepted a court ruling that struck down a British colonial-era law banning gay sex, and the Supreme Court is now hearing appeals.
Malaysia, another former British colony, rarely enforces its sodomy law. Still, it was used twice against Anwar Ibrahim, a leader of the opposition party who went to prison after a conviction in 2000 and was acquitted in a separate case early this year. Anwar denies being gay and says the charges were a trumped-up effort to remove him from politics.
See: Malaysia Makes an Impression
Gays who speak out commonly become targets of abuse, such as Azwan Ismail, who drew anonymous death threats and criticism from Islamic officials when he spoke about his sexuality in a YouTube video in 2010.
--more--"
Also see: Married same-sex couples in Mass. say Obama’s support ‘symbolically huge’
In Mass., joy, caution, and condemnation for Obama
Where'$ the love?
"In Hollywood, still a lot of love, money for Obama
NEW YORK - Under a tent on George Clooney’s basketball court, the cheers were loud and warm for President Obama.
“I want to thank Clooney for letting us use his basketball court,’’ Obama said to a glittery crowd that included Barbra Streisand, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Salma Hayek, and Tobey Maguire. “This guy has been talking smack about his basketball game ever since I’ve known him.’’
It can’t feel too shabby to be applauded by Barbra, Salma, and Tobey while you’re teasing your buddy George. And though many of the guests Thursday night at Clooney’s home in the Studio City area of Los Angeles, like their host, have been steadfast supporters, there was no question the president was feeling some special love at this Hollywood fund-raiser, having thrilled the community a day earlier with the support for gay marriage they’d long awaited.
Only months ago, it seemed uncertain whether Obama would get the same kind of loving embrace from Hollywood that he did in the 2008 campaign. Actor and former supporter Matt Damon in particular voiced his displeasure last year, saying the president had “misinterpreted his mandate’’ and that he needed guts, though he used a blunter term.
But the gay marriage decision “will certainly add to the enthusiasm behind the president’s campaign. It translates into more energy,’’ said Andy Spahn, a political adviser to entertainment mogul Jeffrey Katzenberg.
He and other fund-raisers in the community, though, hasten to note that Obama events had been selling out even before Obama’s gay marriage announcement - as Clooney’s did, raising nearly $15 million.
Yeah, I'd be feeling the love, too.
Maybe some of your tax dollars made it out there, Massachusetts residents.
Does all the enthusiasm come at a cost? Obama’s opponents tried hard in 2008 to make the candidate’s Hollywood connections a liability.
This time, there’s already an ad circulating from the pro-GOP super PAC called American Crossroads. “Four years ago,’’ it starts, “American elected the biggest celebrity in the world.’’
It shows Obama in dark sunglasses, Obama with various celebrities. Then it asks: “After 4 years of a celebrity president is your life any better?’’
That's Karl Rove's crowd, and thus we do not hear him since his man was such an abysmal and abominable atrocity.
That's not to say it is better under Obama. In many ways its gotten worse, proving it is not the man but the agenda he is fronting for that is the true power.
--more--"
I left 'em at the altar.
