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President Obama openly spoke of repealing the Defense of Marriage Act at a fundraiser Monday, as he defended his personal view that gay couples should have the right to marry. While his administration has put out statements on the idea of repealing the 1996 federal law defining marriage as between a man and a woman, it's unusual for Obama to call for its repeal. He did so Monday as one of a list of policy goals for what he hopes will be a second term, along with passing the immigration legislation known as the Dream Act, reforming Wall Street and...

Source link. Click at your own risk. You spoke too soon, Rand Paul. It sounds like the President's views on marriage just got even gayer. Somewhat buried in CNN's story on Barack Obama's fundraiser in New York is this little tidbit about his administration's plans for marriage equality— He also outlined goals he hopes to accomplish under a second term, including the repeal of the Defense Of Marriage Act, which the administration has already stopped defending. This is the first time Obama has said that he wil actively work to repeal the law. At the fundraiser, hosted by openly gay...

Barney Frank told the panel on ABC’s This Week that “I don’t think anyone’s vote was changed� when Barack Obama endorsed the legalization of same-sex marriage — but that might be too optimistic an analysis. The New York Times reports that the White House went on a charm offensive with leaders of faith organizations, including and perhaps especially African-American churches where opposition to gay marriage runs high. So far, the charm offensive has had mixed results: About two hours after declaring his support for same-sex marriage last week, President Obama gathered eight or so African-American ministers on a conference call...

Former Fifth District Congressman Virgil Goode blasted presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney as “the father of homosexual marriages” in a statement released to the news media on the eve of Romney’s visit to Liberty University this weekend. Goode, now running for president on the Constitution Party ticket, referred to Romney’s move as Massachusetts governor to issue same-sex marriage licenses in the wake of a state-court ruling. “Gov. Romney did not stand fast in favor of traditional marriage,” said Goode, who lost his Fifth District seat in 2008 to Democrat Tom Perriello. Goode said he has been a “consistent supporter...

Original title: Obama calls pastors to explain gay marriage support; black churches ‘conflicted’ by president’s decision --------------------------------------------- After making his historic remarks on same-sex unions last week, President Barack Obama led a conference call with black church pastors to explain his support for gay marriage, the New York Times reports. The call, which was held with "eight or so African-American ministers," occurred about two hours after the president's interview with ABC's Robin Roberts. Obama explained to them that he struggled with the decision, pastors on the call told the paper, but several voiced their disapproval. "They were wrestling with their...

I feel sorry for Mr. Obama. Regular readers of my blog may be surprised to see those words, but I really do have feelings of genuine sympathy for him. Any human who carries a semblance of spiritual understanding will share in that feeling of sorrow. Try to imagine him standing on two small boats in the middle of the ocean—he has one foot squarely in the middle of the floor of one boat, and the other foot is similarly fixed to the second boat. If an observer were to make only a passing glance at such a scene, one might...

COLUMBIA, SC (WIS) - Johnny Ray Noble is pastor at Second Nazareth Baptist Church in Columbia. He said he wasn't surprised by President Barack Obama's stance on gay marriage. "I was somewhat disappointed," said Noble. In an interview this week, the President said he supported same-sex unions. "At a certain point, I've just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married," said President Obama. "I thought I'd never hear those words from him being a Christian," said Noble, "Him being happily...

If Time is going to feature a woman breastfeeding on its cover to foment attention for its magazine, Newsweek apparently isn’t going to sit still and allow Time to get all the attention. On this week’s issue of Tina Brown’s Newsweek magazine, President Barack Obama is adorned with a rainbow halo, with the headline “The First Gay President,” an obvious play off commentary that former President Bill Clinton was “the first black president.” The cover promotes the story by Andrew Sullivan, who admitted on his Daily Beast blog and on this weekend’s “The Chris Matthews Show” that the announcement was...

President Obama said that he had already decided to endorse gay marriage at some point ahead of the presidential election when Vice President Joe Biden jumped the gun with his own announcement on Sunday, according to an interview with ABC. “He probably got out a little over his skis, but out of generosity of spirit,” Obama told ABC’s Robin Roberts in an interview that aired Thursday on Good Morning America. “Would I have preferred to have done this in my own way on my own terms without, I think, there being a lot of notice to everybody? Of course. But...

President Obama's historic move Wednesday to support same-sex marriage could ripple all the way to the November election, helping unite his liberal base while threatening to ignite evangelical voters who have yet to commit to presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney, political experts said. But while the public debate over same-sex marriage has sparked explosive political clashes in the past, observers on both sides said it is unlikely to be a game-changer this year, when the economy is the top issue for most voters. Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to support same-sex marriage Wednesday during an interview with ABC...

President Obama endorsed same-sex marriage Wednesday, just hours after North Carolina adopted a constitutional amendment to ban it -- one of 41 states where same-sex marriage is illegal. President Obama's declaration does not change any law, but it does inject a contentious social issue into the race for the White House. "For me personally it is important for me to affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married," Mr. Obama said. CBS News correspondent Norah O'Donnell reports Mr. Obama has often said he was in favor of civil unions for gay and lesbian couples and...

WASHINGTON, D.C., May 9, 2012, (LifeSiteNews.com) – President Barack Obama has flip-flopped on gay “marriage” for the second time, endorsing same-sex marriage in an interview today, in which he said his decision was motivated in part by his Christian faith and his belief in the Golden Rule. “I’ve just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama told ABC News reporter Robin Roberts in an interview to air this evening. He added that his wife, Michelle, agreed with him. “We’ve talked...

President Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage is an election-year boost to his liberal base that comes with some risks. The move is likely to hurt him in the South. One in three Southern swing voters are strongly opposed to gay marriage, a recent Pew Research Center poll found. Just this week, North Carolina, which Obama carried narrowly in 2008, approved one of the toughest bans on same-sex unions in the country. If the switch on same-sex marriage ends up costing him states in the fall, North Carolina will be the first place to look. More central to his reelection will...

President Obama's position on same sex marriage might be "evolving," as he's admitted himself, but he wasn't always so unclear about where he stood. Consider this interview from 2004: Q: “Mr. Obama, you've said that your religious faiths, your religious faith, dictates that marriage should be between a man and a woman. Would you elaborate on that?” OBAMA: “Well, what I believe is that marriage is between a man and a woman, but what I also believe is that we have an obligation to make sure that gays and lesbians have the rights of citizenship that afford them visitations to...

President Obama today announced that he now supports same-sex marriage, reversing his longstanding opposition amid growing pressure from the Democratic base and even his own vice president. In an interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts, the president described his thought process as an “evolution” that led him to this place, based on conversations with his own staff members, openly gay and lesbian service members, and conversations with his wife and own daughters. "I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of...

Ryan Lizza, a Washington correspondent for 'The New Yorker,' tweeted out a statement from a SENIOR Obama advisor today: Sr. BO adviser to me re: BO endorsing gay marriage: BO "may get around to it before this election but he certainly will after the election." If true, I guess we're once again learning what Obama has in mind after the election when he has more "flexibility." There's also news on the Twitter-nets that Obama's going to or already has done an interview in order to clarify his position on same-sex marriage, you know, because the words "for" or "against" require...

The president has been under intense pressure for his self-described “evolving” position on the issue since Sunday, when NBC aired an interview in which Vice President Biden said he was “absolutely comfortable” with gay marriage. Biden’s comments put Obama on the spot, exposing the president’s position to ridicule among gay-rights activists who see it as a wink-and-nod stance to avoid alienating conservative swing voters as well as African-Americans and Latinos key to Obama’s reelection. The president’s challenge was evident in Tuesday’s vote in North Carolina, one of the campaign’s targeted states, where voters overwhelmingly backed a constitutional amendment to ban...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama's campaign says he's "disappointed" with North Carolina's constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Obama campaign spokesman Cameron French said in a Tuesday statement that the ban on same-sex unions is "divisive and discriminatory." French says same-sex couples deserve the same rights and legal protections as straight couples. North Carolinians overwhelming voted Tuesday to amend their state constitution, strengthening a state law that already outlawed same-sex unions.

Via the Examiner, what are the odds that Joe Biden and Arne Duncan and, oh, 99.9 percent of the rest of the liberal intelligentsia support legalizing gay marriage but The One doesn’t? It’s getting harder every day to sustain this charade, which is why Axelrod is suddenly eager to change the subject: Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod on Monday pivoted sharply to Mitt Romney’s views on gay marriage when reporters pressed him on the president’s stance on the issue. On a conference call with reporters, Axelrod said there’s a “clear distinction� between Obama’s views on gay-rights issues and the presumptive...

Rights fight pits Holder vs. PanettaThe Obama administration is withholding medical and other benefits from same-sex spouses of military members, but Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. says he can no longer defend the law that authorizes the practice. Conservatives are charging that Mr. Holder is going back on Pentagon promises to adhere to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in the September repeal of the ban on open gays in the military. Military promises to enforce DOMA, which defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman, induced some fence-sitting members of Congress to support the...

ATLANTA — President Obama today put himself on record as opposing a North Carolina ballot measure that would forbid same-sex marriages in the state. The move appeared to signal a new approach for Obama, who has previously said each state should decide for itself on the question of same-sex marriage, but avoided specific endorsement or condemnation of individual pieces of legislation. “While the president does not weigh in on every single ballot measure in every state, the record is clear that the president has long opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same sex couples,” said...

A Lesbian couple have become the first to share in the US Navy tradition of the 'first kiss' since the repeal of the American military's "don't ask, don't tell" rule. (Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta (L) kisses her girlfriend of two years, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek in Virginia Beach Photo: AP)Petty Officer 2nd Class Marissa Gaeta of Placerville, California, descended from the USS Oak Hill amphibious landing ship and shared a quick kiss in the rain with her partner, Petty Officer 3rd Class Citlalic Snell of Los Angeles. Gaeta, 23, wore...

The Pentagon will permit military chaplains to perform same-sex marriage as long as such ceremonies are not prohibited in the states where they reside, it said Friday. Defense Department guidance issued to military chaplains said they may participate in ceremonies on or off military bases in states that recognize gay unions. Chaplains are not required to officiate at same-sex weddings if doing so is counter to their religious or personal beliefs, the guidance said. And regardless of the Pentagon guidance, military chaplains will still need to take cues from their religious order, said Gary Pollitt, spokesman for the Military Chaplains...

With homosexuals now able to serve openly in the military, the gay rights movement’s next battleground is to persuade the Obama administration to end the armed forces’ ban on “transgenders,” a group that includes transsexuals and cross-dressers.

According to an explosive document, investigators from the U.S. military’s top investigative office found evidence that a Pentagon survey pivotal to the [DADT] repeal was engineered months prior to its release, and was deliberately skewed in later media leaks, with the intention of swaying Congress towards repeal despite opposition from combat troops. An unredacted version of the April 2011 report by the Defense department’s Inspector General was leaked to the conservative Center for Military Readiness, and a slightly redacted version was confirmed as authentic by a Defense spokesperson to LifeSiteNews.com. The authors found that Jeh Johnson, a co-chair of the...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Pentagon chief Leon Panetta has decided to end the ban on gays serving openly in the armed services and certify that repealing the 17-year-old prohibition will not hurt the military's ability to fight, officials said Thursday. His decision, which was expected, comes two weeks after the chiefs of the military services told Panetta that ending the ban would not affect military readiness.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to certify that gays can serve openly in the armed services

President Obama will endorse a bill to repeal the law that limits the legal definition of marriage to a union between a man and a woman, the White House said Tuesday, taking another step in support of gay rights. Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, said Mr. Obama was taking the additional step away from the Defense of Marriage Act — which the administration said earlier this year it would no longer defend in court — in order to “uphold the principle that the federal government should not deny gay and lesbian couples the same rights and legal protections...

(CNSNews.com) – Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.) has introduced a bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act [2] (DOMA) and replace it with the Respect for Marriage Act [3], which would recognize “married” same-sex couples in the same way as married men and women and ensure those gay couples are eligible to receive federal benefits. Feinstein’s bill would not, however, require states without homosexual marriage laws to recognize those legally sanctioned in other states. “The bill [4]is simple,” Feinstein said at the National Press Club on Tuesday. “It would strike the Defense of Marriage Act from federal law and it...

(CNSNews.com) – At the urging of homosexuals gathered at the White House on Wednesday, President Barack Obama praised gay “spouses” in his speech marking lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender “Pride Month.” “We’ve got community leaders here. We've got grassroots organizers,” Obama told the gathering in the East Room of the White House. “We've got some incredible young people who are just doing great work all across the country -- folks who are standing up against discrimination, and for the rights of parents and children and partners and students.” At that point, someone in the audience shouted, “and spouses.” Obama concurred:...

Rumblings from his administration have some conservatives concerned that President Barack Obama may be planning to endorse same-sex marriage this week or next as a gesture honoring Gay Pride month. The president has two big meetings with gay constituents coming up – a $1,250-a-plate "Gala with the Gay Community" in Manhattan this week and a Gay Pride reception at the White House on June 29. Although he has already signed a proclamation this month, as Obama has done every year he has been in office, declaring June as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) month, many expect Obama to do...

(Reuters) - Defense Secretary Robert Gates bluntly told Marines on Sunday that they won't be able to opt out of their enlistment just because they disagree with a government decision to end a ban on gays serving openly in the military. Gates, who is on a tour of Afghanistan to bid farewell to the troops before stepping down at the end of the month, was quizzed by a Marine sergeant about the controversial policy during a question and answer session at a base in southwestern Helmand Province.

President Barack Obama has proclaimed June 2011 “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month.” Painting the LGBT experience as the “story about the struggle to realize that all people can live with dignity and fairness under the law,” Obama highlighted the steps his administration has taken for gay rights, including passing the repeal of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” legislation and giving the LGBT community more access to federal housing programs. Obama made the same proclamation in June 2010, picking up where President Bill Clinton left off in 2000, when he marked the month “Gay and Lesbian Pride Month.” President...

(CNSNews.com) – Anticipating the elimination of the military ban on homosexuality, the Office of the Chief of Navy Chaplains has decided that same-sex couples in the Navy will be able to get married in Navy chapels, and that Navy chaplains will be allowed to perform the ceremonies -- if homosexual marriage is legal in the state where the unions are to be performed.The advisory came in the form of an April 13 memo issued to all chaplains, in which the Chief of Navy Chaplains, Admiral Michael Tidd, said the Chaplain Corps was revising its Tier I training manuals, which had...

WASHINGTON, DC, May 5, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - This past Friday, the Obama Administration became the first administration ever to host a meeting at the White House focusing exclusively on the discussion of federal policy related to “transgender” issues. According to a report in the Washington Blade, the meeting, which was hosted by the Office of Public Engagement (OPE), was attended by transgender activists and White House officials from the White House Domestic Policy Council, the Office of Cabinet Affairs, the Office of Public Engagement, and the counsel’s office, among others. The president himself was not in attendance, however. “While transgender...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Barack Obama will host a White House conference next week on preventing bullying. The White House says the March 10 conference will bring together students, parents and educators to discuss ways to end bullying and make schools safer for students.

President Obama has dropped the defense of marriage out of political convenience rather than reasonable opposition.

The White House is set to make news and history this afternoon when it announces the new social secretary. Jeremy Bernard, currently the chief of staff to the U.S. ambassador to France, will become the third person to hold the job in the Obama administration. But he will be the first man and the first openly gay person to be the first family's and the executive mansion's chief event planner and host. *snip* Bernard and his then-partner Rufus Gifford were early supporters of Obama in California. And they raised a ton of money for him through their company, B&G Associates....

WASHINGTON — President Obama’s decision to abandon his legal support for the Defense of Marriage Act has generated only mild rebukes from the Republicans hoping to succeed him in 2012, evidence of a shifting political climate in which social issues are being crowded out by economic concerns. The Justice Department announced on Wednesday that after two years of defending the law — hailed by proponents in 1996 as an cornerstone in the protection of traditional values — the president and his attorney general have concluded it is unconstitutional. In the hours that followed, Sarah Palin’s Facebook site was silent. Mitt...

With a bold political announcement, President Barack Obama has completed the trifecta -- de facto coups which bring into his White House the powers and functions of the other two branches, as outlined in our Constitution. That document assigns the legislative function to Congress, but the Executive Branch blithely and routinely co-opts that power by run-arounds and choosing to enforce or not enforce duly passed laws of the Legislature. Notable examples in the scant couple of years The One has been in office include: refusal to enforce voting laws against intimidation at the polls in Chicago, efforts to use the...

And so another signature ini tiative of the Clinton admin istration goes down in flames at the hands of the Obama administration. First it was the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays in the military. Now, it's the Defense of Marriage Act -- passed overwhelmingly by both houses of Congress and signed into law in 1996 -- which gave, in its Section 3, federal recognition to the exclusive, traditional nature of one-man, one-woman wedlock and told the states they didn't have to recognize other states' same-sex marriages. In a letter to Speaker John Boehner on Wednesday, Attorney General Eric...

In response to a letter from the U.S. Department of Justice informing the speaker of the House that the DOJ and President Obama will no longer defend a key component of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, the Alliance Defense Fund is issuing the following statement from ADF Senior Legal Counsel Austin R. Nimocks: “The American people have a right to expect their laws to be defended by the very people whose job it is to do so: their government officials. But the administration is making clear that they are simply not going to defend marriage.”

PRESIDENT OBAMA and Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. declared on Wednesday that the Justice Department would no longer be an advocate for the indefensible - a law that relegates the nation's gay and lesbian citizens to second-class status. It was a decision as bold as it was risky ... The Justice Department is institutionally tasked with defending duly enacted congressional legislation. This does not mean that Justice Department officials must believe in the wisdom of the law or its policy implications, only that there are good-faith and reasonable arguments to be made in its defense. It is, in short,...

The Obama administration has declared the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional which translates into: Obama needs a distraction. Now that he is campaigning full time, he’s got no interest in dealing with the crisis in Libya as Crazy Gadaffi prepares to blow up oil pipelines. Nor can he be bothered to comment on the brutal slaughter of four Americans by Somali savages who, apparently, we not persuaded by the administration’s efforts at “negotiations”. Get used to it, America. National security has never been a priority with this president. He won’t suddenly develop any concern for our well being now that...

WASHINGTON – The White House says President Barack Obama is "grappling" with his personal views on gay marriage even as he's ordered the Justice Department to stop defending the constitutionality of a law that bans it. The Justice Department announced Wednesday that, at Obama's direction, it would not defend the Defense of Marriage Act in a court case where it's being challenged. Spokesman Jay Carney said Obama has always opposed the Defense of Marriage Act as "unnecessary and unfair." But Carney said there's no change to how Obama views gay marriage itself.

In a bold, principled, and unexpected move, the administration — led by Obama himself — has determined that the gay-marriage banning Defense of Marriage Act "violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment" and will no longer defend it in court.

well-placed and trusted source tells me that, any minute now, Attorney General Eric Holder will issue a statement announcing that it will no longer defend so-called Defense of Marriage Act lawsuits in court. The source believes DOJ had come to the conclusion that heightened scrutiny would apply, and that these cases cannot be defended in court. A 530d letter has been sent to Congress informing it that, if it wants to defend the statute, it is free to do so. A case is pending now that has a filing deadline of March 11. This is huge, folks. By definitively stating...

A well-placed and trusted source tells me that, any minute now, Attorney General Eric Holder will issue a statement announcing that it will no longer defend so-called Defense of Marriage Act lawsuits in court. The source believes DOJ had come to the conclusion that heightened scrutiny would apply, and that these cases cannot be defended in court. A 530d letter has been sent to Congress informing it that, if it wants to defend the statute, it is free to do so. A case is pending now that has a filing deadline of March 11. This is huge, folks. By definitively...

Appearing on Good Morning America Friday morning, Vice President Joe Biden said the nation's attitude on gay marriage is changing, and that "it’s inevitable there will be national consensus." He told George Stephanopolous the same thing is happening on the issue of gay marriage that happened with "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" in the military. Recently, the President said in a press conference his position on the controversial issue is "evolving": The sentiment I expressed then is still where I am — which is, like a lot of people, I'm wrestling with this. My attitudes are evolving on this. I have...