The Following Is Not A Political Advertisement!

Yes, it was a brave if foolhardy thing to do, coming out as President Obama just did in favor of gay marriage. Of course, after the vote down South, it might well have been expected, passing an amendment to their state constitution that marriages (even civil unions) were to be only between a man and a woman. How many voted for Amendment One (as it was known) out of their own values and beliefs and how many voted that way as a form of taunting the current administration? In other words, how many voters really understood what they were voting for rather than what they were told they were voting for?
Those who cry out against gay marriage try to frame it as the preservation of marriage itself. Which would seem to imply that, if that choice were generally available, people would desert straight marriage as an institution in droves in favor of homosexual unions.
It is especially bizarre because homosexuals are stereotyped as promiscuous, flittering from one shallow sexual encounter to the next. But when these same people dare to talk of love and commitment to one another, that is somehow not acceptable either. Never mind the pain and anguish gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender folks go through finding someone they want to spend the rest of their lives with, especially because it is even more complicated than the mating rituals of the straight. We would consign them to a "damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't" status where we can assume whatever superior posture we like in regard to their frantic search for happiness.
I am, of course, not addressing the real issue behind such homophobia; in my line of work we call it "homosexual panic." When someone reacts so strongly to someone else's sexual orientation, it often is because of fear. Fear of the Other, fear that we might feel something, fear that, given the right time and place and our own  mood, we might...
Yes, there are those who are coming from a thought-out, faith-based perspective. Never mind that they are just as wrong as the gay-baiting homophobes. The trouble arises, not where they begin in sincerity and honesty, but where they end up, with shrill condemnations of others who are doing no harm to them.
No, we won't go into the sufferings of those who are asking for nothing more than an equal place to stand. Beatings, suicides, alienation of family and friends, that all deserves fuller attention another time. Nor am I talking for or against the current presidency; the frothing-at-the-mouth of some in that discussion are a whole 'nother thing, too.
But I can't help but consider the issues behind the issues here.