Super Gay Time

You go, girl.

This week in the Three Ring Circus of Corruption and Stupidity that we call the American political system, our very own President Barack "The Name's Killer; Bin Laden Killer" Obama has made a game-changing announcement. Yes indeed, for the first time in history an American president has openly put his money where his mouth is and given the Miami Heat his full, presidential backing in their pursuit of an NBA championship. Don't mess this one up too, LeBron. In related but far less important news, he has also announced, probably not in the way or at the time he wanted to, that he's fully in support of gay marriage. Like, utterly so. Like, he views homosexuals as completely the same as the rest of us. Crazy! What a queer statement! Some other joke about the word gay! In all seriousness, though: this is an unprecedented occurrence in the political field. This would be like Abe Lincoln deciding to free the slaves right after North Carolina pulled that little secession stunt. This would be like Kennedy saying in 1961, "This Martin guy seems pretty on top of his shit, I should back him up and support his civil rights movement." It's a long overdue decision, in the right direction, on a very divisive subject, at an unlucky time. Politicians never take stances on controversial topics like this unless absolutely necessary, and super never if it's in an election year. That's just asking for trouble.
To be fair, gay marriage has been discussed more under him than under any other president's time in office, 'cause of societal changes and all that shiz, but the fact that he has still mustered up the ballhood to stick it to his haters and actually take a stance on this is...well, it's ballsy.
It's about time that he stopped flip-flopping, dammit, but it's ballsy nonetheless. This could be the straw that breaks the camel's back, if the electoral college were a camel and votes were measured in straws, and whoever puts the most straw on their respective camel's back won the presidency, and dear lord that is a genius plan to reinvent the democratic system. But the gritty reboot of our presidential race will have to wait until after the election of 2012, because now we have to focus on this recent development. And it's a doozy.
Now, Obama has always supported gays and lesbians much more than any of his predecessors. He repealed the controversial "Don't Ask Don't Tell" policy denying homosexuals the right to serve freely in the military. He's been wavering over the whole full-on support of gay marriage thing for a long-ass time now, mainly to not spurn more conservative voters, but also (supposedly) because he hadn't figured out his own opinion on it. Personally I like to think he's known for a while which way his favor lay and has just kept in the closet (hehe) about it. Not that it really matters anymore. What matters now is how this announcement is going be received in the general voting population, and what they'll do when it comes time to, you know, vote.

People still do this, right? It's still cool, right?

We've already seen some hard-hitting responses to Obama's announcement. Mitt "Survivorman" Romney pretty much denounced it as soon as it came out, as duh duh duh what else would he do? Duh. News outlets covered the crap out of it, discussing its merits, its risks, his sheer badassery in flaunting the system, etc. Even Bristol Palin, daughter of the Sarah we all know and love, threw her worthlessly idiotic and frankly hypocritical two cents in. Besides the above-linked drivel, good for a laugh, most important was a poll published the day after by Gallup. And guess what it showed about people's responses to Obama's "coming out"? Nobody really cared, actually. Surprisingly, it seems that more than half of the country's voting opinion was not altered in the slightest by this announcement.
This makes sense, if you think about it. The vast majority of people who weren't planning to vote Obama this fall aren't gonna suddenly have a change of heart on account of this one declaration of gay support, and the reversed situation also applies; chances are, his backing (or lack thereof) of civil rights was not the big issue that decides their political allegiance. It's an influential issue, no doubt, but not really the most vital to discuss right now. As important as universal civil rights are, at the moment they sort of fall to the wayside before matters like the economy and jobs. Gay people need jobs too, you know.
Not to say that it's gonna be all berry-flavored sunshine and rainbow unicorns for Obama. This announcement will not help him in many places, that's for sure. Some of the redder, more Christian swing states (lookin' at you, Ohio and North Carolina) that he won last time, that he depended on for his win last time, may switch allegiance this time around. He's gonna lose hard in the Southern states, harder than he was gonna lose them before this. Right now, it's anyone's guess whether or not his newfound gaiety will be the straw that breaks the camel's back (God, I love that analogy!). We'll just have to wait for November to roll around and see how it turns out for him.
Before, I jokingly (yes, it was a joke, didn't you read the site description? Jeeze) compared Obama
to Lincoln. But now that I mull over my comparison, it strikes me as all the more ingeniously true; both ended a war during their presidency, both are good at basketball (Lincoln is tall, Obama actually plays) and both took tough stances on divisive topics. Eerily similar, no? Let's just hope Obama's turn plays out a lot less bloodily than Lincoln's did.

North Carolina started it for both of them...oh no CONSPIRACY TIME

Now if only we can get that marijuana legalization brought up... small steps, America. Small steps.

Ben Hornung shameless promotion of Strickin tees so much he forgot how verbs work.