Today is a very timely day to discuss my love of Barack Obama. The most powerful man in the world took the bold political step of declaring his support for marriage equality in the last twenty-four hours. He declared his support for people being able to marry - regardless of the sex of the person they love - according to his conscience, not according to the whims of his party. Australians should be so lucky.
Here is a man, a committed Christian nonetheless, who is able to see this issue for what it is. Gay marriage is not an issue of religion, or morals, or politics, but simply one of civil rights. You don't have to be as fiercely clever or as ludicrously attractive as Obama to realise that the essence of this issue is not about whether being gay is OK or not.
People have a right to their own beliefs on that matter, and are able to live their lives according to their own moral codes and those their religion provides for them if they so wish. Legalising gay marriage for others does not take away an individual's right to live in accordance with their own beliefs. No one's going to force you to marry a gay.
Our support of gay people being able to marry actually has nothing to do with our personal opinion of the way they live their lives, but is instead about re-affirming the very important fact that it is simply not the place of a government in a secular society to legislate against the equal treatment of all human beings within that society. The institution of marriage, if you set it aside from its religious aspects, is simply a piece of legislation - a contract to which any two law-abiding and consenting parties should be able to enter on equal terms.
I admire Obama, especially for being able to admit his position on the issue of gay marriage has evolved as he has had the opportunity to think about and discuss its implications from a wide range of perspectives, including that of his daughters. This is the mark of a man who is prepared to question his own beliefs when new information comes to light; who is prepared to say that he has changed his mind and that this is OK. In doing so he shows that the issue of equal treatment of people in same-sex relationships is not a matter of inherited, immovable prejudices or about conservative versus progressive politics, but simply about what makes sense once the passion and anxiety and fear-mongering have been quietened.
It would be outrageous to suggest these days that interracial marriages be banned, though they were only a few decades ago subject to similar prohibitions. So why is it OK to discriminate based on the sex of someone's chosen life partner? The answer is that in accordance with anti-discrimination laws that apply to pretty much every other part of society, it is not. Obama has shown that he recognises this to be the heart of the issue. And thank god for that.
It will be interesting to see how this revelation plays out for Obama in the polls, but it will be also interesting to see how much his very public recognition of the need for equal rights encourages the social debate to evolve.
Thank you, Obama, for striding in on your rainbow unicorn with that Macleans smile, to show that all of us deserve the protections offered and civil rights afforded by our membership of the democratic state. I will never forget you, and I don't care if you were secretly born in Kenya. You are a man I would have proudly encouraged my son to learn more about.
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| Giddy-up Obama, ride that presidential pony! |
Love it :)
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