Mitt Romney is in hot water for doing the same. Then Gov MA for universal health care + abortion + gay rights now Presidential candidate in opposition to all three.
Romney's situation is not the same at all. He's backed away from his involvement in a successful and popular health care reform law in Massachusetts because of its similarity to a less popular national health care reform law that is currently untenable for most Republicans to support even though it's basically the same as their plan from the 90s. It serves to illustrate the extremes the GOP has gone to in recent years where they can't even acknowledge their own successes or compromise on things they've fully supported in the past because they have just become the party of "no."
Using the points above, please illustrate how that is comparable to Obama's situation with his position on gay marriage. Do the Democrats oppose gay marriage, making him bow to the will of the party on something he fully supports? Was it ever a popular and successful law that he sponsored/supported in his state but now pretends is a bad idea?
The President's views IMHO are irrelevant to gay marriage as it's not in his job description to dictate what state laws say on the matter.
As a gay man - and as an observer of his Presidency - I'm more curious about what he says and when he says it an how he pivots on the issues related to the polls.
BS. Back when you were posting in the forum that must not be named you regularly started threads complaining about Obama's position on various gay rights issues including gay marriage and Don't Ask, Don't Tell, which you finally had to back off from when it was repealed in spite of your constant criticism of Obama. Obviously you think his views are important on policy at both the federal and state level, and this is just your latest complaint thread - except with the change of forum you get to pretend like you don't have a long history of doing this.
The fact is that you're essentially a Republican on almost every issue (especially fiscal issues) except this one, so you search for reasons not to support Obama again even though deep down you know you're going to vote for him because despite all your complaints, the other side supports policies that treat gays as second class citizens at best and subhumans at worst. Obama's worst trait is that he supports complete equal rights and benefits with just a different name for marriage.
As far as his pivoting on the issues, it's relatively minor. While I disagree with his position on gay marriage and think it should be legally allowed to be called marriage without the civil union qualifier (or conversely,
all marriages should legally just be civil unions from the government's perspective), he's always supported
equal rights for gays and lesbians. He's opposed DOMA and a federal marriage amendment. The only thing he's possibly fluctuated on in fifteen years is whether it should be called marriage or civil unions despite believing in giving gays full marriage rights and benefits either way.
Was the term civil union (relating to an alternative to gay marriage) even nationally popularized here in the states in 1996? Perhaps his statement in support of gay marriage was for lack of a better term for civil union at the time. Vermont was the first US state to formally use the term in
legislation in 2000.
What President has done more for gay rights and benefits than Obama has? And yet you treat him like a hypocritical oppressor and reserve all your criticism for him instead of much more worthy targets on the opposing side. It's like a lesser version (because Obama hasn't done as much as they did) of criticizing JFK and Johnson on civil rights for not doing enough, despite all of their efforts. As others have said, you need to learn to pick your battles, not cut off your nose to spite your face, don't burn your bridges, and whatever other expressions you want to toss out there.
They are both experts at pandering to their voting bases and what the polls tell them to say when needed
Your comment doesn't even make sense since his voting base overwhelmingly supports gay marriage. He's in opposition to his base on this issue, not pandering to it.
If Obama's an expert on pandering to his voting base, why has he faced so much criticism from people in his own party for compromising with an openly belligerent Republican opposition in Congress both before and after they held the majority in the House? The chief criticism of him on the Left is that he's not liberal enough (despite always being moderate) and is given to making unsatisfactory compromises.
Well, I think it says something about a man if he claims I was for gay marriage secretly before I was against as a Presidential candidate but now I'm for it again since the polls seem to indicate that the general public is at a tipping point in favor of it.
How does one "secretly"
submit a response on his own letterhead and sign his full name to a public questionnaire on gay marriage in a gay periodical? Was it in invisible ink? I see you still have a habit of not reading the articles you post.
Perhaps all of this is true. But it's still disappointing when the "hope and change" guy is no different than all the rest. That has been and continues to resonate throughout his Presidency.
That's your fault for foolishly placing the value of a political catchphrase with a subjective meaning above the value of his specific policy proposals. As far as policy proposals go, he's doing pretty
damn good on keeping his promises considering the openly hostile Republicans he's faced in Congress who are unwilling to give an inch.
It's also your fault for naively believing he wouldn't sometimes have to behave like a politician in order to find a balance between appealing to the voters, maintaining the support of his party, compromising with the opposition to get things done, and advancing his own policy agenda. But if you think he's no different from Bush, McCain, or Romney, you've been paying even less attention than I given you credit for.
Why not just cast a vote for Mitt hoping he's better at job creation than Obama has been as POTUS and hope the social issues fall into place like when Mitt was governor of MA?
Romney's
job creation record as governor of Massachusetts during a time when the country was in an economic boom was near the bottom of the nation. Romney was a job destroyer in his private ventures, breaking up and selling off companies for profit, leaving thousands out of work, and shipping jobs overseas. His job creation record is abysmal.
No. On topic: I hope the gay people in NY give the President hell and a bunch of shit over his flip flops on this issue and press the hell out of him at this fundraiser. If they can find evidence of where he said he was for gay marriage before he said he was personally against it on MTV in 2008 the President deserves all the grief they can possibly hurl at him.
I hope the gay people of New York are smarter about this than you are and realize that although they might disagree with Obama on this one issue, he's a far better representative of their rights than any of the Republican alternatives.
