The Other GM Issue

It's hardly surprising that the GOP presidential candidates have strong views on the topic of same-sex marriage. Nor should it surprise us that these views are typically negative. What is amazing, though, is the wild abandon with which the candidates express those views, usually with a profound disregard for logic and reason (not to mention facts).

Had she not withdrawn from the race after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses, top prize would certainly go Michele Bachmann for proclaiming that gay people could get married as long as they got married to people of a different gender. Among the surviving candidates, Mitt Romney would seem to be the obvious leader based on the sheer volume of positions he's taken in the course of his political career, generally depending on what political group he's trying to woo at any given moment, but I think Gingrich is probably the real winner.

His comments last year describing same-sex marriage as something that "fundamentally goes against everything we know" seem straightforward enough, but the former Speaker of the House saved his "A" game for the end of the year. When asked at a December campaign event in Iowa how he'd engage members of the gay community who want the right to marry, Gingrich told the man that those people should vote for President Obama. On the surface, that sounds fairly sensible until you remember that the President is actually ambivalent about gay-marriage as opposed to civil unions.

I could continue by talking about Rick Santorum's views, but if you're reading this you probably have access to Google, where a quick query will render any such recap superfluous. To what extent any given candidate's comments are expressions of genuine principle or political expediency is hard to say. Whatever the case may be, I can't shake the over-riding feeling that at least some of their opposition to gay-marriage stems from their insecurities about having another half of the population reject them as hateful people that no one would ever want to share their lives with them.

The Messenger or the Message

You can say a lot about the influence of religion in politics, especially presidential politics, but it's certainly never boring. In the 1960 election, John F. Kennedy felt compelled to address his religious views in order to defuse concern that his being a catholic would somehow mean that he would effectively be taking orders from the Pope. As with many things, it's been a long road since then and distance is seldom synonymous with progress.

JFK put his political future on the line to vindicate the right of politician's to freely partake of the Constitution's first amendment in their public life. 51 years later, we've moved from questions of whether a candidate would take orders from an earthly manifestation of the almighty to having a candidate explicitly talk in terms of what god is telling them to do. It should surprise no one that the candidate in question is Michele Bachmann.

Putting aside her supposed joke about the recent earthquake and hurricane on the East coast of the United States being a message from god to get the attention of politicians, Bachmann has said on a number of occasions that god directed her to take specific actions, ranging from introducing legislation against same-sex marriage in the Minnesota state legislature to the decision to run for President.

In some ways, it sickens me to think that JFK's stand back in 1960 may be one of the things that makes it possible that people are treating Bachmann as if she's a credible candidate for any elected office. Then again, that's how it often works. A courageous (albeit flawed) individual takes a principled stand to fight for the rights of far less principled people. Rather than dwell on that, I'll think about that masterful JFK speech for a bit.

I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute, where no Catholic prelate would tell the president (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote; where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference; and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the president who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials; and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew— or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist. It was Virginia's harassment of Baptist preachers, for example, that helped lead to Jefferson's statute of religious freedom. Today I may be the victim, but tomorrow it may be you — until the whole fabric of our harmonious society is ripped at a time of great national peril.

Kennedy obviously had his faults, but he knew the score.

Careful What You Wish For, Michele!

Michelle Bachmann is at it again. By it, I mean using highly selective data points that eleminate vital context for political gain. The latest (at least that I've heard of) involves her proclamation that if she's President of the United States, we'll go back to having gas under $2/gallon. Because for lies to work, they have to have at least a superficial grounding in reality, Bachmann points out that average gas prices have nearly doubled from the $1.79 level at work when Barack Obama took office.

What she neglects to mention is that prices had actually been very close to current levels before Obama was elected and only came down as a result of the worldwide economic downturn. Putting aside the general lack of specifics about how her hypothetical administration would achieve this goal, the unavoidable truth at work here is that gas prices are driven largely by crude oil prices and those prices generally go down only when demand is lower as occurs during an economic slowdown.

Someone who's cynical about the notion of President Bachmann might observe that this means Bachmann is telling potential voters that if they make her President the economy will collapse, whichwould be a shocking bit of honesty from a presidential candidate of any major party. That is, of course, a cheap shot. I think I'll take it anyway.