President Obama’s War on Marriage

by George Neumayr

In May 2012, Newsweek crowned Barack Obama “the first gay president” for his war on marriage. A halo appeared above his head in the cover photo. The magazine was applauding him not only for his defiance of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) but for his “evolution” in favor of gay marriage, a stance no president before him had ever taken.

This flattering narrative about his brave and anguished transformation was bogus. He had endorsed gay marriage many years before. “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight any effort to prohibit such marriage,” he wrote in reply to a 1996 issues survey from a gay magazine based on Chicago’s North Side. When this became public and threatened to cause him political damage as a state Senate candidate, his aides cast the answer as a garbled misfire. It wasn’t. He had signed the letter himself.

His opposition to gay marriage was always a charade. In 2008, he faked up nominal opposition to it in order to win the White House, all the while intending to defy DOMA and redefine marriage. As soon as he entered office, he began holding “LGBT” receptions in the White House, telling gay activists that Americans would lose their “worn arguments and old attitudes” under his juggernaut. “Welcome to your White House,” he said. “We’ve been in office six months now. I suspect that by the time this administration is over, I think you guys will have pretty good feelings about the Obama administration.”

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