UPDATE: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/12/samuel-l-jackson-obama-vote-black_n_1271797.html
Dear Ones:
Here is an article which claims that President Obama opposes gay marriage for religious reasons.
My question: DOES HE OR DOESN'T HE? You decide and if you figure it out, PLEASE LET ME KNOW! Thank you
Blessings to you,
Rev Barb
Obama elusive on about-face on same-sex marriage
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
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President Obama says he opposes same-sex marriage for religious reasons. Fourteen years ago, however, while a churchgoing Christian and a state legislative candidate, he endorsed the right of gays and lesbians to marry.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsors of Proposition 8, California's ban on same-sex marriage, cited Obama's current position in their 2008 campaign and have quoted him in their defense of the measure during a federal court trial in San Francisco. Gay rights groups, noting that Obama actually opposed Prop. 8, have urged him to take a stance on the lawsuit, without success.
What has received much less attention is Obama's unexplained reversal of the position he once held backing same-sex marriage - the position still held by the church he attended for most of his adult life.
Obama was running for the Illinois state Senate in Chicago in February 1996 when he answered a questionnaire from a gay-oriented newspaper, Outlines, on gay rights issues. One of his answers was, "I favor legalizing same-sex marriage, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages."
The Windy City Times, which later acquired Outlines, said it interviewed Obama in 2004, when he was a state legislator running for the U.S. Senate. In a January 2009 article recapping the interview, the newspaper quoted him as saying he no longer supported same-sex marriage "primarily just as a strategic issue," and not because he had changed his philosophy.
Religious connotation
"I think that marriage, in the minds of a lot of voters, has a religious connotation," Obama said, according to the article. "I know that's true in the African American community, for example." Instead, he endorsed civil unions, a designation that did not exist in 1996.
Obama takes the same stance today - yes on equal rights and civil unions, no on same-sex marriage - but attributes the distinction to his religious convictions.
As he put it in an August 2008 presidential candidates' forum, "I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian ... it is also a sacred union. God's in the mix."
He is far from unique among presidents in changing positions he held before his election. But presidents usually attribute their turnabouts to external events or congressional resistance.
Differs with Obama's church
Obama's reference to his religious convictions about marriage also contrasts with the position of the
denomination with which he has been most closely associated, the United Church of Christ.
Obama attended the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for 20 years and has said he found his faith there. He resigned in May 2008 during an uproar over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermons that labeled the United States a racist, warmongering nation......
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/02/16/MN591BSS44.DTL#ixzz0fwUCo3Wa
http://www.dearoneshealingministry.blogspot.com/
Reverend Barbara Sexton "The Biblical Biochemist-Where Science Meets the Cross"
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