What Will It Take to Bring Obama Home? – Obama Harkens Back To Slavery With “States’ Rights” For Same-Sex Marriage – Moving Left – Part 15

“Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State’s citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual and cannot be infringed by the State. These convictions must be reversed.”

Civil Rights leaders such as the late Coretta Scott King, Representative John Lewis, NAACP Chair Julian bond, and Reverend Al Sharpton have long supported equal marriage protection for LGBTQ citizens. In fact, John Lewis filed a friend-of-the court brief in the Massachusetts case that led to the state becoming the first in the country to legalize marriage equality. And the California State NAACP filed an amicus brief, as did the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in New York City.

In advocating that same-sex marriage should be left up to the states ABC News reported Obama stating, “I think it’s important for us to work through these issues because each community is going to be different, each state is going to be different.”

Perhaps, after nearly one full term in office, Obama is still unaware of the deleterious effects of how the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) prevents the federal government from fully protecting same-sex nuptials. DOMA denies us a government-issued civil marriage license, and over 1100 federal rights and benefits, including social security benefits, the ability to file a joint federal tax return, and the right to petition for a spouse to immigrate, among other benefits and responsibilities conferred upon heterosexual married couples.

But how many sides are there to a politician’s mouth eyeing 2012?

“If Obama were to come out for marriage equality today, nothing could happen tomorrow,” said one Democratic strategist close to the administration who spoke on condition of anonymity to ABCNews.com. “The Defense of Marriage Act still needs to be repealed, and that won’t happen soon with a Republican-controlled House in place.”

“I was reminded that it is my obligation not only as an elected official in a pluralistic society, but also as a Christian, to remain open to the possibility that my unwillingness to support gay marriage is misguided,” Obama wrote in his recent memoir, “The Audacity of Hope.”

While our President states his opinion is still “evolving” on this issue, he needs to know that we LGBTQ Americans and our families want to sample what he and Michelle and every heterosexual married couple take for granted — marriage, not marriage-lite.

Our democracy can only begin to work when those relegated to the fringes of society can sample what those in society take for granted as their inalienable right. For that to happen people, like state lawmakers, have to step in to make the democratic process work for us all.

And so, too, our president!