While
President Obama’s attitude concerning same-sex marriage
is evolving, and presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s attitude
is an unequivocal denouncement, the American people seem
to moving solidly toward an acceptance of marriage equality.
Both Obama and Romney need to get with the program.
Simply
put: In the last presidential election it would have been
political suicide to support marriage equality. This November,
it may be a risk not to.
If
Romney too vociferously denounces same-sex marriage, or
attempts to employ it as a wedge issue (as candidate George
W. Bush successfully did in 2004), he’ll risk not only Republican
donations, but also Republican voters - and not just moderate
ones.
“As
they look past a dwindling anti-gay slice of their base,
smart Republicans know they need to get in step with their
own professed values - freedom, responsibility, small government
- not to mention America’s majority for marriage,” Evan Wolfson wrote in a recent New
York Times op-ed, “The Anti-Gay Base Is Shrinking.” Wolfson is the founder and president of Marry, and is the author
of Why
Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right
to Marry.
Obama
may attempt to shrewdly fence sit on the issue while winking
a stealth nod our way. Or he may play a game of “go away
closer” and hold support until after his re-election. Either
option is a game of Russian roulette and some LGBTQ Americans
may hold onto their pink dollars this time around.
“Meanwhile,
Freedom to Marry’s call on the president and the Democratic
Party to embrace a ‘freedom to marry’ platform plank has
won support from numerous party leaders, elected officials
and tens of thousands of Democrats online,” Wolfson writes.
For
both these politicians, Obama and Romney, whose words are
always measured and whose political game strategy is always
cautiously safe, a full support of same-sex marriage would
help not only their political aspirations to the 2012 White
House, but it would help in positively supporting the millions
of children in same-sex families to know that they, too,
are part of the American dream.
With
exposure to LGBTQ people, and with more and more Americans
wanting LGBTQ members in their families to receive the same
state and federal protections as every heterosexual American,
a seismic shift has occurred. The increased acceptance of
gay marriage has a lot to do with public acceptance of LGBTQ
people. A 2011 survey by the Pew
Research Center
discloses that 58 percent of the American populace accepts
LGBTQ people. And the latest Pew survey reveals that “47
to 43 percent plurality favoring gay marriage, with as many
Americans saying they strongly favor (22 percent) as saying
they strongly oppose (22 percent).” Much of this change
in attitude toward LGBTQ Americans is both generational
as well as cultural.
The
culture of many faith communities and denominations (that
were once upon a time helplessly homophobic) has also changed.
While many have changed their views of LGBTQ people based
on both spiritual repentance and theological awakening,
those who haven’t are at least not spewing religious vitriol
from the pulpit.
But
then, of course, there’s my faith tradition - The Black
Church.
A
homophobic faith tradition that Obama - in his first presidential
run to the White House - unabashedly wooed and from which
he won votes. With right wing organizations like National
Organization for Marriage (NOM) courting black churches
for their strategic 2012 election game plan to drive a wedge
between LGBTQ voters and African American voters, Obama
will need to stay clear of these churches and clerics.
And
while a preponderance of these black churches has not change,
(and sadly to say they won’t in my lifetime) there is a
growing number in this faith tradition who don’t want a
constitutional amendment on gay marriage and want LGBTQ
civil rights to be addressed as a theological issue.
Josef
Sorett, who is an assistant professor of religion and African-American
studies at Columbia University, wrote in his respond to
the recent New York Times question “Is Support
for Gay Rights Still Controversial?” that “...many
black Christians are now having more nuanced conversations
about the significance of sexual identity and expression
in determining the measure of full citizenship. Some black
churches are seeing shared commitments with lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender activists, even as these churches
affirm that the African American struggles of the 1960s
were unique.”
While
the own-ness of homophobic cleric is skewed toward African
American ministers, let’s not forget the white homophobic
evangelical clerics Obama also wooed and won over. On the
day Obama was sworn in, Pastor Rich Warren, founder of the
evangelical megachurch, Saddleback Church, in Lake Forest,
California and supporter of California Proposition 8, which
amended the California Supreme Court’s ruling that gay marriage
is constitutionally permissible, gave the invocation at
his inauguration, with many LGBTQ Americans who voted for
Obama feeling like we were thrown under the bus.
But
this election year, the tables are turned. Both Obama and
Romney have much to lose should they ignore the important
civil rights topic of marriage equality on their run to
the White House.
BlackCommentator.com
Editorial Board member, the Rev. Irene Monroe, is a religion
columnist, theologian, and public speaker. She is the Coordinator of
the African-American Roundtable of the Center for Lesbian and
Gay Studies in Religion and Ministry (CLGS) at the Pacific
School of Religion. A native of Brooklyn, Rev. Monroe is a
graduate from Wellesley College and Union Theological Seminary
at Columbia University, and served as a pastor at an African-American
church before coming to Harvard Divinity School for her
doctorate as a Ford Fellow. She was recently named to MSNBC’s
list of 10 Black Women You Should Know. Reverend Monroe is the author
of Let Your Light Shine Like a Rainbow Always: Meditations on Bible
Prayers for Not’So’Everyday Moments. As an African-American
feminist theologian, she speaks for a sector of society
that is frequently invisible. Her website
is
irenemonroe.com.
Click here
to contact the Rev. Monroe.
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