The problem is that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional. Federal courts have ruled DOMA unconstitutional. It’s unconstitutional on more than one count.

1. Article IV, Section 1 of the Constitution mandates that “Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.” But under DOMA, this clause is directly contradicted, declaring that “No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe, shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State…”. This gives same-sex marriages and different-sex marriages are given separate and unequal status. The marriages of different-sex couples must be recognized at the federal level in all 50 states, no matter in what state they were married. The marriages of same-sex couples are denied that recognition. That brings us to…

2. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution has an equal protection clause making it unconstitutional for any state to “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Under DOMA, Indiana is required to acknowledge the marriage of straight couples in Massachusetts, but is allowed to reject the validity the marriage of same-sex couples in Massachusetts. That is unequal protection under law. I’m not just saying that. Federal Judge Jeffrey White made that ruling in February of this year.

People talk about how much Ron Paul loves the Constitution and supports the Constitution and defends the Constitution. But in supporting the Defense of Marriage Act over and over again, in forbidding the Justice Department to take a stance against the Act, Ron Paul subverts the very same Constitution that he frequently waves in the air and claims to value so deeply.

Mr. Constitution, my foot.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says that he’s confident that a provision supporting same-sex marriage will be added to the Democratic Party platform. Of course, he doesn’t get to make that decision on his own. Democratic Party delegates have to introduce and approve such an addition to the platform.

11 state Democratic chairs have called for the addition of marriage equality to their party’s platform. 22 Democratic U.S. senators have done the same. Of course, these numbers constitute only a minority of Democratic politicians in their respective spheres.

It’s a nice thing that some prominent individual Democrats are now indicating some openness to marriage equality. Such expressions aren’t what matter in the end, however. What we need is national law, or judicial recognition of laws that already exist, that guarantee equal legal status for heterosexual and homosexual marriages.

Add this issue to the list of policy matters to watch during the Democratic National Convention.

In 2011, Shorter University had a faculty of just 109 instructors. However, in October of last year, a few years after the Georgia Baptist Convention’s control of the university was enforced by the Supreme Court of Georgia, the school’s administration presented employees with a new set of requirements. Employees would have to sign “lifestyle statements”, promising to engage in religious worship at local Christian churches, and vowing not to engage in or support homosexuality or extramarital sex.

As a result of the new requirements, 59 faculty members, plus other employees at the school, have declared their intention to leave Shorter University at the end of this school year. Only 12 percent of faculty have decided to sign the draconian lifestyle standards so far.

So, when Shorter University reconvenes this autumn, it will be mostly with new professors, who don’t know each other, and have no history of working with the institution. They’ll have one thing in common, though: They’ll all be ideologically screened to be in line with the beliefs that the administrators at Shorter University are willing to accept. Students at Shorter will be learning certain kinds of information only – and not because it’s accurate information, but because the information has been judged by the Shorter authorities to be politically correct.

Most parents, when they send their children off to college, are looking for an experience that will enable the full development of their children into adults, in a setting where students are able to grapple with the realities of the world, building a mature self-concept and set of intellectual abilities that is founded in honest debate and open access to information. Shorter University won’t be delivering that kind of educational experience. Instead, Shorter University students will gain their degrees without having full access to information. Shorter students will be trained to follow a narrow course that has been selected for them, kept in the status of children, in a controlled environment where the educational philosophy is that the less students learn about the world, the better.

Shorter University will be offering degrees of ignorance, building a reputation for graduates who know less, can do less, and who have not been fully tested with exposure to the full range of ideas and information available to most university students. Shorter University students will carry with them an association with bigotry and intolerance. Diplomas from such an institution of education will qualify Shorter graduates to work for small range of employers within a small ideological territory. Who will want to graduate with that kind of handicap?

“I believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman,” he said. “The President and the Democrats can talk about all this all they want but the fact is that the American people are focused on our economy and they’re asking the question, ‘Where are the jobs?’”

Where are the jobs? The jobs are at the weddings, Speaker Boehner.

Weddings drive employment. Most weddings include activities that provide work for a huge number of people, including jewelers, musicians, dress designers, bakers, florists, stationery suppliers and photographers. Then there are all the jobs in the travel industry associated with honeymoon trips. Finally, when reality sets in, jobs for marriage therapists are created in every community across the nation.

Legalize gay marriage, and you’ll provide a ten percent increase in jobs in all these sectors. Still, John Boehner doesn’t want these jobs for America, simply because he has a personal problem with gays and lesbians.

That’s the kind of selfish attitude that the American economy can’t afford.

North Carolina Bans Gay Marriage but You Can Marry Your First Cousin

In an outrageous attempt to regulate religious views, the state of North Carolina banned gay marriage in their constitution, a document many of the voters have never read.

The law basically bans all unions, marriages or relationships unless it is one man and one women, of the sexes. This means, common-law-marriages between a man and a woman is not recognized either.

The kicker is that you can marry your first cousin in North Carolina, so inbreeding is totally legal.

I thought this had to be a joke, you know, a Southern stereotype kind of thing. Surely a state that goes about banning harmless same-sex marriages can’t be promoting inbreeding, which actually does hurt children.

But no, it’s no joke: marriage between cousins is legal in North Carolina. The National Conference of State Legislatures has researched the issue and found that North Carolina lets cousins marry. Preventing harm to North Carolinians’ tender sensibilities is apparently more important than preventing birth defects.

After the ridiculous vote in North Carolina in favor of a constitutional amendment banning equality of marriage law for heterosexual and homosexual couples, President Obama’s opposition to marriage equality became untenable. Obama’s aides saw the revulsion which the North Carolina vote caused outside of the South, and realized that the Obama re-election campaign was about to be stuck in the company of the country’s worst bigots.

So, thanks for making it clear, President Obama, that you personally think that North Carolina made the wrong decision. Welcome to the 21st century – 12 years late.

But now, Mr. President, what are you going to DO about it?

It looks like President Obama intends to do nothing. He said that his newfound acceptance of the idea that homosexual couples deserve equal rights is just personal. Even as he stated this new personal opinion, Obama declared that he still believes that states should have the right to vote to ban same sex marriage.

That places Barack Obama still on the wrong side, when it counts. It places President Obama still on the side of the bigots in North Carolina.

That’s because it’s not really the job of the President of the United States to express his personal opinions and leave it at that. It’s the job of the President of the United States to be the chief executive. It’s the President’s job to act.

And so, what Barack Obama has said today is that yes, he personally believes that it’s fine for same-sex couples to get married, but that as President he will not lift a finger to give them the right to do so. When bigots in backwards states like North Carolina decide to enact bans against marriage equality, Obama won’t do a thing to stop them.

That’s not just a betrayal of the gays and lesbians. It’s a betrayal of the Constitution and the rule of law.

The rule of law in the United States of America is founded upon the national Constitution, not the authority of the states. States cannot pass laws of any sort that contradict the rights guaranteed by the national Constitution, and the national Constitution requires equality under the law.

Barack Obama’s refusal to stand up for that principle is weakening the authority of the Constitution, and is, therefore, weakening the ability of anyone, heterosexual or homosexual to trust that their legal rights are going to be respected. Obama’s new position is akin to that of Abraham Lincoln before the Civil War. President Lincoln was happy to allow slavery to continue, just so long as there wasn’t a war fought between the states over the matter.

Lincoln’s wishy washy position against national abolition of slavery could not save the union, and it made for a weak moral position during the initial part of the Civil War. The only way that Abraham Lincoln could turn around his failed policy was to finally take executive action against slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation.

Barack Obama is often likened to Abraham Lincoln – but right now, what we’re seeing from Obama is most like a reflection of Lincoln’s worst political instincts. Obama, like Lincoln, is letting a bunch of yahoos from the Carolinas lead the way.

Real leadership from Obama, appropriate to his position, would not allow such mean-spirited erosion of the national authority in order to defend cruel, outdated traditions of inequality. Real leadership would see that, through action of the Supreme Court or through Congress, the disloyal state of North Carolina forced to come back into line with the law of the land, and revise its state constitution to reflect the fact that, in the United States, no group may be given an unequal, inferior legal status.

If President Barack Obama does not take such action, then he has only succeeded today in communicating that he has no intention of using his power to defend the Constitution from domestic threats, as he promised to do when he took the Oath of Office two and a half years ago. If he will not honor his Oath of Office now, he should not be given the chance to dishonestly swear it again.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it, until Barack Obama stands up and takes responsibility in the job that he’s been given: Americans who truly believe in constitutional rights don’t need to vote for either Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. There is an alternative for us: Jill Stein, who has prominently supported equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians for many years, and who, just today, endorsed the platform of the New Progressive Alliance, which includes the following plank: “Our country was founded upon a set of principles and ideals that have their most eloquent expression in our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Based on these core values, we support equal rights for all citizens, regardless of ethnicity, gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, country of origin, or other status, including the right of same-sex couples to marry, and the right of all women to make decisions about their reproductive health.”

A generation ago, the Southerners were shouting and screaming that it was God’s will to have laws that outlawed people of African ancestry from getting married to people of European ancestry. Yesterday, Southerners passed a law creating an amendment to the state constitution of North Carolina declaring that only heterosexual couples can get married.

It was an act of defiance against the Constitution of the United States, which bans inequality under the law. The Civil War settled, some time ago, that state constitutions don’t have the right to overrule the national Constitution. But then, maybe the voters of North Carolina never learned about that in school. After all, the South does have the worst educational test scores in the nation.

Oh, I know that’s a mean thing to say, but it’s true. We’re all supposed to hold our tongues and not make fun of the backwards idiocy of the South. We’re supposed to be patient as they fly their Confederate flags, diphthong their way through life, and elect nasty, corrupt politicians into Congress.

When Southerners go and pass laws like North Carolina did yesterday, though, I don’t see much reason to be nice. The fact is, the South is holding the rest of the nation back.

Nationally, the majority of Americans support equal marriage rights for all American couples, whether they’re heterosexual or homosexual. Practically everywhere outside the South, it’s an overwhelming majority of Americans that supports marriage equality.

Just as they were slow to get the message with slavery, it’s the people in the South who are the last people in the country to grasp the idea that making it illegal for large numbers of people to get married does not make for a stable society.

Southerners don’t like to be made fun of for their nasty little regional culture, but then they go ahead and confirm the worst ideas that people have about them, engaging in loud public acts of cruel stupidity. It’s time that the rest of the nation speaks clearly and slowly to the South, so that it can understand: IF – YOU – DON’T – WANT – US – TO – MAKE – FUN – OF – YOU – THEN – STOP – ACTING – LIKE – IGNORANT – YAHOOS.

Biden was asked, “In a second term, will this administration come out behind same-sex marriage, the institution of marriage?”

Biden answered, “Well, I, I, I can’t speak to that. I, I, I, I don’t know the answer to that.”

Of course Joseph Biden knows the answer to the question. Barack Obama made his opinion about same-sex marriage quite clear during the 2008 presidential election. He said that he does not support it.

As President, Barack Obama has never retracted that position. Not once.

Vice President Biden simply didn’t want to say Obama’s position on same sex marriage out loud, because to do so would be to remind Democratic voters that Barack Obama is ideologically much more like a Republican than they would like to admit.

After Biden gave his own personal opinion about marriage equality, and stumbled in trying to avoid speaking about Obama’s, the Obama White House rushed out several statements that attempted to make Barack Obama’s political position on same-sex marriage seem as enlightened and up to date as Biden’s.

A spokesman for the Vice President declared, “The Vice President was saying what the President has said previously – that committed and loving same-sex couples deserve the same rights and protections enjoyed by all Americans, and that we oppose any effort to rollback those rights.”

That’s a slippery statement, because it seems to address the right of same-sex couples to get married, but it actually doesn’t. It has to do with second class systems of domestic partnership. There can be no “rollback” on the national right to marry for all couples, whether heterosexual or homosexual, because there is no such national right. The states have led the way on marriage equality, while Barack Obama has remained in opposition to marriage equality.

What Barack Obama supports is the equivalent of separate schools for African-American children. Obama supports separate but equal systems of legal arrangements for gay and lesbian couples. The trouble is that those separate but equal systems are inherently unequal. They’re not marriage.

A domestic partnership status in one state isn’t recognized in another state. Imagine if you got married in New York, but upon crossing the state line into Pennsylvania, you and your wife were no longer married. That’s what same sex couples who are in state-sanctioned domestic partnerships have to deal with. They have no legal standing to protest, either, because they aren’t married.

The whole point of domestic partnership agreements is that they are not equal, that they are not marriage.

Back in the 1990s, domestic partnership agreements were a step forward from no legal rights at all. It didn’t seem possible at the time that the majority of Americans would ever support the legalization of same-sex marriage.

It’s not the 1990s any more. Now, the majority of Americans supports marriage equality.

President Obama is trying to triangulate on the issue of same-sex marriage, to play games that string GLBT Americans along while making the Obama 2012 re-election campaign palatable to voters with more regressive attitudes. It’s a manipulation, and it’s growing thin.

Barack Obama is using the word “Forward” as the theme for his re-election campaign, but it’s not forward to oppose equal marriage rights for gays and lesbians. It’s backwards.

On this issue, and others, Obama seems to content to merely be a little less objectionable than Mitt Romney. That’s not good enough. There are better alternatives in the 2012 presidential election. One of them is Jill Stein, the Green Party presidential candidate.

Stein has openly supported same-sex marriage legalization for years.

So, I wasn’t really surprised when I read that Billy Graham is joining a campaign to pass a state constitutional amendment that would prohibit recognition of same-sex marriages from other states. It’s always disappointing to see a person promote bigotry, but Billy Graham has been promoting bigotry for a long time – even before he was caught on audio tape discussing how Jews were conspiring to destroy America with President Richard Nixon.

A spark of surprise did race across my mind upon seeing this news, though. I suddenly remembered that Barack Obama had met with Billy Graham. How can Barack Obama reconcile Billy Graham’s opposition to equal rights for gays and lesbians when Obama believes…

… and that’s where the thought fizzled out. Barack Obama, of course, has expressed opposition to equal rights for gays and lesbians himself. Obama has said that he opposes same-sex marriage rights – an opinion he hasn’t contradicted as President.

Still, there’s some part of my brain that equates Barack Obama with a progressive attitude, with tolerance and respect for diversity, with support for equality. There’s something about Barack Obama’s political personality that suggests forward-looking ideas, even when Obama embraces harshly regressive policies. I find myself wanting to believe that Barack Obama shares my liberal values, even though he’s proven over and over again that he doesn’t.

The gap between the image and the reality of Barack Obama is quite similar to the gap between the image and the reality of Billy Graham. Wise voters will remain skeptical of the image and pay attention to the facts… but how many American voters are really that wise?

Think about that sentence. Is this still a world in which people who don’t discriminate against gay people are worthy of special recognition? If you’re living in the Republicans’ world, it is. Grenell resigned from the Romney campaign after waves of Republicans criticized Romney for employing Grenell. Did critics have a problem with Grenell’s job performance? No. They just had a problem with Grenell being gay.