California Democrats are fortunate to have some politicians who are true friends who actually walk their talk; but the national party makes it difficult to regard politicians as "friends" when, in the name of liberalism, they would enact gay "Jim Crow" laws relegating us to "separate but [not] equal" second-class citizenship. One instinctively wants to lash back against putative "friends" who stand idly by, and often participate in, the tyrannous majority's enraptured legislative fag-bashing that we see in state after state.
Barack Obama, whom George W. Bush called "the pope," is America's new deity in the cult-of-personality. Obama, a "friend" who spoke eloquently against the federal marriage amendment, has launched the biggest Madison Avenue public relations snow job in American history. Witness the manufacture of consent. He boasts of being a "big believer" in the revered doctrine of separation of church and state. He has no legal objections to the gruesome process of partial-birth abortion, even though it is repugnant to his Christian beliefs. It's a woman's right to choose, you see. We must respect separation of church and state. It's the law. However, same-sex couples must be denied the fundamental right of civil marriage. He offers no legal reasons mind you. Oh no. This civil rights lawyer never states legal reasons. It's his "deep faith" you see, his "church history," and the "religious connotations" to marriage that mandate we be kept "separate but [not] equal." So much for being a big believer in separation of church and state.
If a civil rights lawyer walked into court and argued that fundamental civil rights should be denied solely for metaphysical reasons one could fairly wonder if he were a charlatan who found his law degree in a box of Cracker Jack. Legally, Obama's position on civil marriage is intellectual rubbish. Audacity indeed!
To demonstrate tolerance, however, he would enact prejudice into law with a civil union substitute for fundamental rights. This would institutionalize second-class citizenship while relegating gays to our own Jim Crow railroad car on America's new Freedom Train. It's not mere audacity but downright chutzpah, for an African American civil rights lawyer to oppose due process and equal protection for no reason other than deep faith and religious connotations. This demonstrates contempt for the doctrine of separation of church and state to which he pays lip-service. If one of Obama's law students gave his answer on a right to marry hypothetical s/he'd deservedly flunk the exam and might better serve the interests of justice by selling shoes at Macy's. Unlike the revered Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, who used religious faith to fight against discrimination and exorcize it from the law, Obama's approach uses religion as an excuse to deny civil rights and legislate prejudice into law.
Behind the smoke and mirrors of sophistry and illusion this is a lawyer for whom revelation trumps reason. Hypocrisy is revealed by the fact that his own denomination (the United Church of Christ) performs same-sex unions and blesses them with equal dignity. Hypocrisy is again revealed when he audaciously marches his minister into the public square in ostentatious display of "deep faith" when, in fact, that minister (the Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright) is on record at the National Black Justice Coalition's Web site as supporting marriage equality. Obama's position betrays not only his legal principals but those of his Christian denomination too. Clearly, he cannot blame his "separate but [not] equal" prejudice on his religion.
That Web site also reveals Obama is at odds with history's most towering black civil rights leaders, including his late predecessor Illinois Senator Carol Moseley-Braun. Many amongst this revered elite spilt their own blood on the cold streets of Alabama to fight against separate but equal, but on marriage equality Obama abjures the wisdom of those most fit to instruct. They speak in unison but he does not "heed their rising voices."
After the 2004 victory Obama appeared on Oprah and she asked him if he could to go to Washington and still "be real." He said, " ... I think the biggest mistake you can make in politics, [and] in life ... is to end up trying to conform to what you think is going to keep you in office and you start taking the safe votes and avoiding controversy and not speaking out on issues of injustice because it might ruffle feathers." [Applause! Applause!]
But apparently Obama had already done that. In April 2004, journalist Kevin McCullough, reported that, in a letter to supporters, Obama agreed with homosexuals, believed that gay marriage should be granted, and that our plight is exactly like that of African Americans in the 1960s. This put him at odds with growing numbers of outspoken black clergy. When attacked by this faction his Machiavellian calculation and tactical considerations trumped conviction and principal. He then denied supporting same-sex marriage, but only civil unions. He conformed to what he thought would keep him in office, took the safe votes, and avoided controversy that might ruffle feathers.
Very interesting. To give Obama the benefit of the doubt on marriage equality we must regard him as incredulous as Lincoln when he claimed to oppose abolition.
The circumspect should beware of the cynical strategy for manufacturing consent in this bonfire of political vanities. Politicians cunningly calculate that the old fossils ossified by orthodoxy will soon die out and be replaced by a new generation of voters less tolerant of having their civil rights molested in the name of God. They presume consent can be manufactured in an avalanche of money and the loud flashy hype of vapid, but alluring, propaganda. They pretend that fundamental rights are a matter for states to determine at the arbitrary will of a tyrannous majority and that "separate but equal" passes constitutional muster. A bedrock principal of our Constitution is that such rights remain beyond the reach of majorities, they are not dependant upon the vicissitudes of political controversy but are existing legal principals to be applied by the courts, they may not be submitted to vote, and they depend on the outcome of no elections. Again America betrays these principals.
When gutless liberal Democrats cower before the iniquitous new national pastime of legislative fag-bashing they demonstrate we are on our own to fight in the courts. So be it. But when politicians ostentatiously proclaim their "deep faith" and march their preachers into the public square promulgating religion as their sole excuse for denying civil rights, then we should, in the spirit of Voltaire, have but one response: Ecrasez l'infame!
John P. Mortimer earned his bachelor degree at Roosevelt University in Chicago and his law degree from the University of San Francisco Kendrick School of Law. Before his recent retirement he practiced law in California for 17 years and is now an inactive member of the State Bar of California.