FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Wayne Besen
Phone: 917-691-5118
Email: wbesen@truthwinsout.org
Remarks from Sitting President a Landmark Moment in LGBT Rights Struggle, Says TWO
BURLINGTON, Vt – Truth Wins Out praised President Barack Obama, who today became the first sitting president in history to state his belief that all Americans, including LGBT people, should be free to marry the person they love. The President expressed his support for marriage equality in an interview with Robin Roberts of ABC News.
“Truth Wins Out applauds President Barack Obama for making history by becoming the first sitting president to publicly support full marriage equality,” said TWO Executive Director Wayne Besen. “This is a great day for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans and a landmark moment in the quest for LGBT civil rights.”
“President Obama’s words provide hope to millions of LGBT people, including my husband and me, that we will live to see the day when every American, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity, will be able to marry the person they love,” said John Becker, TWO’s Director of Communications and Development. “In my lifetime, I have never been prouder to be an American than I am today.”
Truth Wins Out is a nonprofit organization that fights anti-LGBT extremism. TWO specializes in turning information into action by organizing, advocating and fighting for LGBT equality.
Glad that he made the right move, not the politically safe move by keeping quiet. I like a man who stands by his principles, not saying whatever he thinks others want him to say.
Now, will every gay person in America please get off the dime and the constant complaining. At this point there is literally NOTHING that the president could have done for us that he hasn’t. Further, let’s be honest – at this point we couldn’t have a starker comparison, even on gay issues. One man donated to stop gay rights (Mitt Romney through his foundation), one man has gone out on a limb threatening his own reelection to support them immediately after they took a hard defeat in yet another state in the south.. I don’t care what party you are part of, every gay American and every friend and family member of a gay maerican should vote, and if possible donate to Barack Obama as a clear show of support for his brave and dangerous stand.
Thank you President Obama. Thank you.
Kind thoughts,
Reynolds Jones
Of course he would…..I’m glad that he deemed NOW the time to do so!
God Bless Mr President Obama.
Thank you for your integrity as a human and your courage as the President. May your legacy continue to be known for that as well as the many other situations you have righted in the USA. I bid you God speed and Grace in the continued challenges you and your team faces. With deepest regard and appreciation, Charles Begley
A “presidential debate” in 2008…
REV. RICK WARREN: Define marriage.
SEN. BARACK OBAMA: I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. (Applause.) Now, for me as a Christian, it’s also a sacred union. You know, God’s in the mix. (Applause.)
Who can you trust? Not Obama…
Jerry, baby,
apparently Obama recognized that a) god may not be in the mix, or b) god may be in the mix for gay people as well.
either way, it’s called evolving.
What’s YOUR excuse?
JeremiahA:
Yep, we can catch a gay bashing Etch A Sketch that claims he can’t remember assaulting a gay kid, when all five of his friends do.
Do you realize how foolish you sound? What are you, some kind of apparatchik?
Dear Wayne:
Wayne, I’m confused. Now I’m all for guys getting down with guys and girls getting down with girls (oh baby!). But how do I respond when somebody tells me that hardly anybody outside of San Francisco, NYC, and George Clooney’s living room is for homosexual, sorry, I mean gay, marriage? Just the other day somebody told me that homosexual (whoops, there I go again), gay marriage has been defeated every time it has been voted on, 32 out of 32 times? Wayne, that’s 1000%! The best I ever batted was 280! And it was defeated in North Carolina by a 3 to 1 margin! Gee, it seems that when it comes to LGBT’ers, America is just not that into you!
Wayne, how do I respond? Can you help?
Civil rights have never been decided by popular vote do2. Slavery, women’s suffrage, integration, and every other civil rights battle has been decided contrary to popular opinion. This is not a country ruled by mob. It is ruled by the promise that everyone deserves equality under the law. Why change that now?
Merely delaying the inevitable, do2. Sometimes, people have to be dragged into the 21st century kicking and screaming, no matter how much they want it to be the Dark Ages.
do2, the people of America recognize that our country does not have a healthy marriage culture so to protect the right of marriage, they have voted for this institution. Marriage would exist in Washington, D.C. but for an unelected three-member panel deciding that those citizens did not have the right of suffrage when it came to this issue. When you create a new right that is an arbitrary construction (same-sex marriage), other already existing rights (marriage, freedom from persecution and hate, etc.) are often infringed upon.
Jeremiah, how does keeping people from getting married protect the institution? How did extending the right to marry get rid of the institution in D.C. or any of the other places that have equal marriage rights? How does equal marriage rights infringe on existing rights? How does it infringe on the right of suffrage? Did women’s suffrage, integration, interracial marriage, or any other civil rights issue that was decided based on law instead of mob rule infringe on others’ rights?
What “marriage culture” are you talking about? Is it the one where men could have as many wives as they could afford so long as each woman’s closest living male relative gave his consent? Is it the one where men are legally entitled to beat and rape their wives? Is it the one were women had to relinquish all of their assets to their husbands? Define the “marriage culture” that requires you to hurt gay people so much.
RainbowPhoenix, your questions are actually “begging the question.” The rights and restrictions of state-sanctioned matrimony were already shared by all citizens equally. Now marriage either has a fixed, natural teleology or it is a social construction. Reasons tells us that the former choice is correct, hence same-sex marriage arbitrarily eviscerates marriage of its essential public purpose, creating an artificial institution in its place with the label of “marriage” slapped on it. This infringes on the right of marriage.
A healthy marriage culture is where fathers and mothers are attached to their children and to one another in a life-long, committed, faithful, self-sacrificial relationship through marriage…generally speaking.
If it’s commmitment you are concerned about, you are doing an abysmal job of showing it. All the persecution of LGBTs that you sign on the books does nothing to solve that problem, which is why we see through that lie. If it truly were your concern, you lot would do everything in your power to discourage divorce and adultery, but you don’t. In fact, you lot indulge in those very same things. Wouldn’t want to cramp your style, right? So just use gay people as the scapegoat for your marital problems. How convenient. If you really want someone to blame for the high failure rate, blame the people that pull two-day-date-and-marry maneuvers (just jumping into marriages without even knowing the person), or that make marriage out to be this magical cure for all relationship ailments, instead of actually working them out.
Also, people marry for several differing reasons, not just to have children. Children aren’t required for a stable marriage. There are also several families that adopt, because of people with reasoning like yours that falter at the face of commitment.
No Jeremiah, marriage rights are not shared equally. Gay people are actively denied the benefits given to straight people. And how exactly does marriage have a natural anything when humans are the only species that uses the practice and it is not even remotely uniform? Ever heard of the Na?
And how is it “begging the question” to point out the logical problems with the arguments used to restricting marriage rights?
If marriage is about “uniting fathers and mothers with their children” why do you focus exlusively on people who in no way interfere with that? Why aren’t you working to make shotgun weddings mandatory? Why aren’t you trying to restrict divorce? Why aren’t you trying to deny the legal benefits of marriage to straight couples who can’t or won’t have children? Why are you actively working to deny the benefits of marriage to gay couples who do have children? Why aren’t you trying to make it a legal requirement for married couples to have children? Those would go much farther in encouraging your “healthy marriage culture” than denying gay people the ability to protect their families.
Jeremiah said “When you create a new right that is an arbitrary construction (same-sex marriage), other already existing rights (marriage, freedom from persecution and hate, etc.) are often infringed upon.”.
Two things wrong with that:
1) it is not an arbitrary right.
2) no existing rights are infringed upon.
You yourself go on and on about how marriage is important in bringing people together and tying them to their children. Marriage opponents go on and on about how marriage benefits opposite sex couples, all the same benefits apply to same sex couples. It brings them together, ties them to their children, makes them happier and more productive members of society thus benefiting everyone. Same sex marriage is anything but an arbitrary construction.
The same sex couple down the street marrying in no way interferes with opposite sex couples ability to marry and rear children. People criticizing you for harming innocent people is not persecution such as denying someone the right to marry, adopt, or not be fired from their job or evicted from their home for who they are. And you have no right not to be hated. Those who harm innocent people deserve to be hated, you cannot attack innocent people and expect not to be hated. What goes around, comes around – you hate gays, gays hate you.
Jeremiah said “RainbowPhoenix, your questions are actually “begging the question.” The rights and restrictions of state-sanctioned matrimony were already shared by all citizens equally.”.
That’s a lie. Marriage discrimination laws allow John to marry Alice but deny Jane the same right John has to marry Alice – the rights to marriage are NOT all shared by citizens equally. The idiotic claim that “everyone has the same right to an opposite sex marriage” is the equivalent of Muslim countries saying “Christians have the same freedom of religion that muslims do – everyone has the right to be Islamic”. You’d never buy that B.S. if you were a christian in a muslim country so, please stop being a moron and falsely claiming “The rights and restrictions of state-sanctioned matrimony were already shared by all citizens equally.”.
Jeremiah said “Now marriage either has a fixed, natural teleology or it is a social construction. Reasons tells us that the former choice is correct,”.
You wouldn’t know reason if it bit you in the *ss. There is no such thing as teleology, no definition has ever been fixed. The definition of marriage has changed repeatedly over the millenia and it is most certainly a social construction – THERE IS NO MARRIAGE IN NATURE.
Jeremiah said “hence same-sex marriage arbitrarily eviscerates marriage of its essential public purpose, creating an artificial institution in its place with the label of “marriage” slapped on it. This infringes on the right of marriage.”
.
That’s just a buch of nonsense words. The same sex couple down the street marrying has no impact whatsoever on any opposite sex couple marrying and /or having children – there is no infringement on the rights of heterosexuals, the sole infringment is on the right of gays to marry the person of their choosing. You haven’t even remotely begun to make your case and of course you haven’t because that’s impossible.
Jeremiah said “A healthy marriage culture is where fathers and mothers are attached to their children and to one another in a life-long, committed, faithful, self-sacrificial relationship through marriage…generally speaking.”.
Procreation is NOT a legal requirement of marriage. Never has been and never will be. And regardless, if you had any concern for children whatsoever you’d be demanding that same sex parents be allowed to marry and be attached to their children and one another in a life-long, committed, faithful, self-sacrificial relationship. You’re a hypocrite and a bigot.
“you hate gays, gays hate you.”
Priya Lynn, this is the farthest from the truth. And I will try to keep this short.
“…so, please stop being a moron and falsely claiming “The rights and restrictions of state-sanctioned matrimony were already shared by all citizens equally.”
I understand you subjectively feel that this is an unsatisfying statement, but it is still a legitimate point.
“…it (marriage) is most certainly a social construction…”
A marriage begins a family and families are the building blocks of society, therefore marriage and families are logically prior to society as parts are to the whole. Society then enacted laws to protect that which already existed, and not to create marriage and families according to an arbitrary convention.
“The same sex couple down the street marrying has no impact whatsoever on any opposite sex couple marrying and /or having children…”
Here is my response from the same challenge you offered elsewhere.
You are using equivocal language here. There is marriage or there is same-sex marriage. They are not the same thing, i.e., they are mutually exclusive. So the dual-gender can enter a marriage with intrinsic value or they can enter a marriage which value changes with the wind. They cannot do both.
“Procreation is NOT a legal requirement of marriage.”
You are correct. However, this does not mean that there is no natural tie of procreation with marriage. There is no legal requirement to travel if you have a passport but this does not sever the tie of passports with traveling.
If no tie existed to an essential purpose of marriage…
…no government benefits for married couples would exist.
…no restrictions would exist for incestuous marriages.
…civilization would not have always recognized spouses as male and female.
…marriage, as defined by Vaughn Walker for example, would never have come into being since solely inessential purposes fit no unique societal benefit.
…then SSM activists would support polygamy, etc., but they do not.
“You’re a hypocrite and a bigot.”
You know…bullying starts with name-calling.
And I will let you have the last word.
Jeremiah,
Legally, marriage does not require procreation, and procreation does not require marriage. But, legally, marriage does benefit children, and many same-sex couples do have children. Therefore, same-sex marriage benefits children. That’s a fact, not an opinion.
If opposite-sex married couples without children benefit from marriage, then same-sex couples without children also benefit from marriage. That’s another fact, not an opinion.
So, if marriage provides tangible benefits for all the families involved, whether or not they have children, why is marriage right for opposite-sex couples, but wrong for same-sex couples? How does society benefit from one, but not the other?
Is your thinking so rigid, and stagnant that anything slightly different than your life-long experience is viewed as a threat? Or maybe you just loath gay people, and you feel they are not entitled to the same good things in life as you are. At one time the general attitude towards gay people was uniformly malicious, but nowadays you have the opportunity to be exposed to more enlightened thinking, but when you reject it in favor of clinging to your prejudices, that makes you a bigot.
Yes Jeremiah you do hate gay people. Your entire movement exists for no other reason than to hurt us and see that we continue to be treated as legal inferiors. Hatred is the only reason for that no matter what half-baked excuses you make up.
No it is not a legitimate point to claim that marriage was already equal. A lie can never be a legitimate point.
Marriage began as a property exchange between a man and his son-in-law. It still is in some parts of the world. Society created marriage to regulate that exchange. “Family” had nothing to do with it.
If opposite-sex marriage and same-sex marriage were mutually exclusive, than the existance of one would actively prevent the other. And yet we see them cooexist in parts of America and the rest of the world. Opposite-sex couples continue to get marriage licenses and the legal benefits thereof and raise their children while their same-sex counterparts do the same. If they were mutually-exclusive it would not be possible. If you are so insecure in your marriage that it only has meaning if you can keep if from others, than that is your failing and not a good excuse to punish us.
There can not be a natural anything tied to marriage because marriage is not natural. It was created by humans for the purpose of property exchange and later evolved as a legal means for people to define and protect their families.
That is why the government benefits exist. It is why there are restrictions on incestuous marriage. It is the reason why Judge Walker saw that denying the benefits of marriage to a group of people serves no purpose and only places an undue hardship on them.
The only reason we do not support polygamy or any of your other bigoted examples that make me fear for the safety of your wife is because their are seperate issues that need to be decided on their own merits and unlike you increasingly desperate bigots we can discuss the issue at hand instead of screaming about possible slippery slopes.
Bullying begins with setting out to hurt another person. You set out to hurt us for no reason than that we defy your myopic worldview. You are the bully. You are not being bullied just because your victims are fighting back instead of rolling over and taking it like you think good little inferiors should.
Jeremiah said “I understand you subjectively feel that “gays have a right to a heterosexual marriage” is an unsatisfying statement, but it is still a legitimate point.
It’s not legitimate in any way and my characterization of your statement is objective. You wouldn’t argue that Muslims have a legitimate point when they say “Christians have the same right to religious freedom Muslims have, everyone has the same right to be Islamic.” so once again, spare me the absurdities. And as I pointed out, under the marriage discrmination laws you favour John can marry Alice, but Jane doesn’t have the same right he has to marry Alice – people absolutely do NOT have equal rights to marriage under your scheme.
I said “…it (marriage) is most certainly is a social construction…”
Jeremiah said “A marriage begins a family and families are the building blocks of society, therefore marriage and families are logically prior to society as parts are to the whole. Society then enacted laws to protect that which already existed, and not to create marriage and families according to an arbitrary convention.”.
False. Many marriages never produce children and are not families in that sense. As well, as you keep dishonestly ignoring, many same sex couples DO have children. Same sex couples have always existed as well, Society enacting laws to protect that which alread existed is true there as well, so there is no arbitrary convention. You can’t have it both ways.
I said “The same sex couple down the street marrying has no impact whatsoever on any opposite sex couple marrying and /or having children…”
Jeremiah said “You are using equivocal language here. There is marriage or there is same-sex marriage. They are not the same thing, i.e., they are mutually exclusive. So the dual-gender can enter a marriage with intrinsic value or they can enter a marriage which value changes with the wind. They cannot do both.
That’s like saying there are male humans and female humans, we shouldnt’ give them equal rights, they are not the same thing, they are mutually exclusive. I’m different from a male, or a black female, but in the only important ways we are all the same and that is true for both heterosexual and same sex marriages – the difference is irrelevant, rights must be the same. Allowing gays to marry in no way affects the marriage of heterosexuals. There marriage will be just as male/femal after the gay couple down the street marries as it was before, The decision to allow marriage equality is in no way analogous to changing with the wind. Its been a slow, deliberate, intensely debated and well thought out change. And allowing the same sex couple down the street to marry in no way changes the intrinsic value of any heterosexuals marriage.
I said “Procreation is NOT a legal requirement of marriage.”
Jeremiah said “You are correct. However, this does not mean that there is no natural tie of procreation with marriage. There is no legal requirement to travel if you have a passport but this does not sever the tie of passports with traveling.”.
To say marriage is “tied” with procreation is a mighty iffy proposition. No one has to be married to procreate and no one who marries has to procreate. Any link between marriage and procreation is purelye a cultural creation. Even if that were true, it is immoral to tell people they shouldn’t be allowed to travel without a passport because traveling and passports are related just as it is not moral to tell people they shouldn’ be allowed to marry becaue procreation and marriage are related. And once again many same sex couples have children so your argument that marriage facilitates raising children does not justify excluding same sex couples from it.
Jeremiah said “If no tie existed to an essential purpose of marriage…
…no government benefits for married couples would exist.
…no restrictions would exist for incestuous marriages.
…civilization would not have always recognized spouses as male and female.
…marriage, as defined by Vaughn Walker for example, would never have come into being since solely inessential purposes fit no unique societal benefit.
…then SSM activists would support polygamy, etc., but they do not.”.
I never said there was no tie to an essential purpose of marriage. The essential purpose of marriages is to benefit the individuals involved and thus society therefore marriage must include same sex couples. Gays have no obligation to give you a reason to oppose incestuous marriage, our only obligation is to show why banning same sex marriage is unjust and we have done that. If you want to ban incestous marriages I suggest you come up with a justifiable reason to do so rather than falsely claiming “We ban same sex marriages therefore its just to ban incestuous marriages”. I have my reasons for opposing such marriages but apparently you do not.
While civiliazation has always recognized spouses as male and female it also has at times recognized spouses as same sex and even if it hadn’t “We’ve always done it this way.” is never justifcation for saying “We can’t change it.”. As to marriage equality supporters supporting polygamy, its you who said “marriage has always been the union of at least one male and one female”, not us. On one hand you claim to be against polygamy and on the other you’re justifying it and lamenting that we don’t support it. We’re not going to support polygamy just so you have an excuse to say gays should be denied equality.
I said “You’re a hypocrite and a bigot.”
Jeremiah said “You know…bullying starts with name-calling.”.
Its not bullying or name-calling to describe you accurately as you are. If Tom murders someone we don’t say its bullying and name calling to call him a murderer. If Suzy steals a car we don’t say its bullying and name calling to call her a thief. No, what bullying is, is intentionally harming an innocent person because that gives you pleasure. That’s you, you’re the bully. And a hypocrite. And a bigot.
Well done, Rainbowphoenix. : )
Well, I am a man of my word, so as I wrote before, I will not add anymore. Just wanted to lay out some of the arguments for the protection of marriage.
Thank you for responding.
[...] high-profile declarations of support for marriage equality from leaders and groups as diverse as President Barack Obama, Jay-Z, General Colin Powell, and the NAACP, should forever dispel the toxic myth that [...]