A Speech Rombama Should Give

With the news that North Carolina just amended their state constitution to ban same-sex marriage, one can look with great disappointment at our acclaimed liberal Nobel Peace Prizewinning President for some moral guidance on the civil rights issue of our time.  Oh, wait, no, Obama's "still making up his mind" on the issue.  Do they give out "Profiles in Cowardice" awards?  Because at this point the sad pandering to what can only be explained as bigotry is no longer exclusively the duty of Mitt Romney.  Fortunately when LBJ was president he didn't decide that his opinion on racial segregation was "still evolving."

So Obama and Romney are sadly wimps--what else is new?  Here's the speech it would have been nice to hear one of them give:

"I understand North Carolina is voting today to decide to make sure that gay couples cannot get married.  For those of you who support this effort, I want to ask a few things of you.  First, please make sure to never refer to yourselves as Christians.  My own Christianity--as well as that of my opponent, has been challenged by morons for years now.  However, despite the hurtful suggestions of these mouth-breathers, I am a Christian and I really don't want to be lumped in with the sort of people who aren't content to just disapprove of another person's personal behavior but are willing to use the power of the state for no real purpose other than to insult and humiliate others.  Nobody is telling you that your churches have to sanction gay marriages, or that you personally have to approve of them--though it would be nice if you did so.  Instead, they're only asking that the state not deny them the same marriage rights heterosexuals enjoy--including hospital visitation, tax benefits, and inheritance to name a few.  But you just can't allow that--okay, just don't sully the Christian faith by using it as an excuse.

"Second, I ask that you stop pretending this is about protecting marriage.  It's not, and you know it.  If you really wanted to protect marriage so badly, you'd be working to make it harder to divorce, easier to get marriage counselling, or something to that effect.  Denying marriage rights to another couple furthermore has nothing whatsoever to do with your own marriage.  If you can show me one heterosexual couple that fell apart solely because a gay couple was allowed to marry, I'll retract this.  But I'm not holding my breath.

"Third, I ask that you consider getting some sort of 'bigotry cure.'  If you can devote resources to psychological counselling to cure people of their homosexuality, I'm sure you can do the same to cure yourself of whatever strange condition is causing you to fear gayness so much that you need to use government power to fight it.

"It was only half a century ago that some states still outlawed racially mixed marriages--stupid laws that would have prevented our current president from actually existing, if you can believe it.  And again, we're talking about a case where the power of the state was used solely to insult and humiliate and deny rights.  No one is trying to outlaw bigotry--you can disapprove of whatever you want, for any reason you want.  But there's something profoundly wrong with using the state in this way, that has real-world consequences for people who are not bothering you.

"I realize this may lose me some votes--screw it.  There's no point in being president if you can't stand up for what's right."