Why They Voted For Obama But Against Same-Sex Marriage

by John Spritzler

[newdemocracyworld.org]

Liberals are baffled. How could people vote for Obama and also vote (52% at last count in California) to make same-sex marriage unconstitutional? Chief liberal blogger, Daily Kos author, "kos," lamented the day after the election, "What a night of contrast, going from celebrating the first African American president and the defeat of another anti-abortion ban in South Dakota, to the narrow victory of the hateful and bigoted Proposition 8 in California...That California would vote for a black president with a margin of 61-37 and then shit on gays was horrifically disappointing. We have a long way to go."

The reason liberals are baffled is because they have listened to, and believed, their own silly propaganda about same-sex marriage. Proposition 8 in California said, "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." An accurate characterization of the debate on this issue would frame it as a debate over whether same-sex couples should have a right to marry. An honest discussion of the issue would enquire into the reasons why virtually everybody today agrees that some kinds of couples--those who are siblings to each other--even if consenting unmarried adults, should NOT have the right to marry. An honest discussion would ask whether or not the concerns and values that lead to denying such couples the right to marry, namely the principle that the welfare of children who may be produced by such a marriage trumps the desires of adults, may also apply in the case of same-sex couples.

The liberal "vote no" side refused to engage in such a debate. Instead it chose to act as if there were already an uncontroversial concensus that same-sex couples, like any other couples, had a right to marry, and the only question now was whether they should be denied that right, which of course would be an intolerant, discriminatory, and evil thing to do.

Here is how the liberal propaganda argued the case for voting "no." If one goes to the anti-Proposition 8 website at http://www.noonprop8.com/action you will find their online videos that they played on television to make their case. It is fascinating to watch them, because they all have the same theme: that it is wrong to take away rights from certain people, and that to do so is discrimination and intolerance. California's liberal attorney general, Jerry Brown, was so determined to frame the issue this way that he gave proposition 8 the formal title of "Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry." The proposition 8 proponents challenged this title with a lawsuit, but lost.

In contrast, if one goes to the pro-proposition 8 web site at http://www.youtube.com/profile_videos?user=familypolicy one will find the videos that they used to train people how to campaign for the proposition, which give substantive reasons why children raised by same-sex couples are worse off for not having both a mother and a father, and why therefore equating the value of same-sex marriage with opposite-sex marriage by legalizing the former is a bad idea if we believe that the welfare of children trumps the desires of adults. Here is one example of what the speaker says in one of the videos.

[start of the excerpt from the video:]

 

Is the same-sex family about the needs of children or the wants of adults? In order to answer that question, we can learn a lot from the world's most famous lesbian mom, ... Rosie O'Donnell. Rosie O'Donnell a number of years ago did an interview with Dianne Sawyer, and in that interview she talked about her family and she talked about being a lesbian and a lesbian mom and the experience of that, and her children, and the subject of her little boy Parker came up. Parker was six years old at the time.

And Dianne Sawyer asked Rosie, she said, "Does Parker ever ask about his dad?"And Rosie said yes. In fact I'm going to read it from the transcript, just so you get the impact of this. "What does little Parker say?" Rosie says this. "He says, 'I want to have a daddy.'" And Rosie says, "I can imagine that would be great. And it would probably be easier for them if I were married to a man. But here's what I tell them. 'Parker, if you were to have a daddy you wouldn't have me as a mommy because I'm the kind of mommy who wants another mommy.'"

That is a stunning statement. And I don't even know if Rosie appreciates what she said. Little Parker wants a daddy. And little Parker didn't learn about needing a daddy because Rosie unwittingly enrolled him into a fundamentalist day school where they indoctrinated him with that. Or he didn't get the idea from listening to Dr. Dobson on the radio every day. He knows he needs a daddy because he's a little boy and there's no adult in his home that is like he is, who can teach him what it's like to grow up to be a man. And so he has that desire. "I want a daddy." And what's the answer from his mom? The answer is, "Parker, I'm sorry. You don't get what you need because I want what I want."

There are a whole lot of systems of parenting out there, but I don't know of anyone who thinks THAT is a good idea of parenting.

[end of excerpt from the video]

Apparently the pro-Proposition 8 (anti-same-sex marriage) argument--that same-sex marriage ought not to be a right-- was more convincing to more people than the argument of the other side that refused to engage the question at all and instead just repeated over and over again that it is wrong to deny anybody their rights.

According to the liberal punditry, however, people who voted Yes because they think it is more important for children like Parker to have a daddy than for adults like Rosie to have their desires met, are "hateful and bigoted." People who think that it is wrong to make same-sex marriage legal because it would give social approval to the practice of using sperm or egg donors to conceive children who will, by design, not know their biological mother or biological father are, according to liberals, "hateful and bigoted." In the world of these liberals, placing the welfare of children before the desires of adults is "hateful and bigoted."

Why are liberals so dead wrong on this issue? For most, it is simply because they believe the liberal propaganda. They don't know why people oppose same-sex marriage because their liberal magazines and bloggers and the Hollywood TV shows, which all reflect the pro-same-sex-marriage viewpoint, never tell them. Liberals really don't have a clue. They think it is only because of bigotry or Bible fundamentalism. What the liberals don't understand is that, while many people cite the Bible to justify their opposition to same-sex marriage, they don't oppose same-sex marriage only because of what the Bible says. Nobody, for example, who cites the Bible on same-sex marriage defends slavery, even though the Bible says slavery is permissable. Nobody who cites the Bible on same-sex marriage says we should "smite one's neighbor" if he works on the Sabbath because the Bible says so. People pick and choose from the Bible according to the values they hold independently of the Bible. Placing the welfare of children above the desires of adults is one such value.

But why do the liberal opinion-shapers keep their followers in the dark on this question? I think the reason is this. The liberal opinion-shapers are connected to big money; they are employed by the corporate-controlled mass media and they have a green light from the corporate elite to push same-sex marriage and to frame the debate as one between "hateful and bigoted" people versus enlightened and tolerant people. As the LA Times reported (Nov. 5), "Most of the state's highest-profile political leaders -- including both U.S. senators and the mayors of San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles -- along with the editorial pages of most major newspapers, opposed the measure. PG&E, Apple and other companies contributed money to fight the proposition, and the heads of Silicon Valley companies including Google and Yahoo took out a newspaper ad opposing it."

What's in it for the corporate elite? Social control through divide-and-rule. The aim is to pit the college educated, professional types against the more working class church-going types in a conflict where the former view the latter as "hateful bigots" and the latter view the former as arrogant selfish jerks who look down on regular people. The aim is also to make regular people wonder if maybe they are indeed "hateful and bigoted" and therefore unworthy to have a real say in society--in other words to undermine the basic idea of democracy, which is that ordinary people are fit to rule society. This has always been a goal of upper classes in all societies.

While I think that Obama will be a huge disappointment to the millions of people who voted for him, it is clear that the reason people voted for Obama had absolutely nothing to do with being "hateful and bigoted" and the reason many of those same people in California voted for Proposition 8 also had nothing do to with being "hateful and bigoted." The fact that liberals cannot understand how people could have voted for Obama and for Proposition 8 shows just how wrong and confused liberals are.

Eight years ago California voted 61% against same-sex marriage. This time the vote was only 52%. Part of the explanation is certainly that the pro-same-sex marriage side has learned how to skillfully suppress the substantive debate and replace it with a pseudo-debate about whether it is right or wrong to deny people their rights. (What next? Will state attornies general in other states now title similar propositions against same-sex marriage "Eliminates a basic and fundamental right for some people for hateful and bigoted reasons"?)

Though they lost the vote twice now, the pro-same-sex marriage organizations have announced that they intend to do in California what they always do, which is to rely on the courts to trump the will of the people. They hope to overturn Proposition 8 by arguing that--of course, what else?--the voters have no right to change the constitution to take away rights from certain people. Time will tell if they succeed, but the mere fact that they resort to a handful of judges to thwart the will of the people illustrates how they are tied to the most anti-democratic forces in our society, namely the corporate elite.

 

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