Gay Marriage and Gun Control

Dear Friends,

Shortly, President Obama is going to have to face two issues that he has been avoiding.   

The New York Times reported today (here) that President Obama will speak out about guns in relation to the massacre in Tucson.  The sources are not talking about what he will say just that he plans to speak on the subject.  We should all put pressure on him to, at a minimum, throw his full throated support behind the bills introduced by Representative McCarthy and Senator Lautenberg in their respective houses of Congress.  If he cannot even do that, it will be time to give up on him as any kind of a leader on this issue.  Banning extended magazines, prohibiting people on the no-fly list from buying guns and closing the gun show loophole that permits guns to be purchased without any background check should be easy for any normal person to support.

The second issue is that two lawsuits are going to force President Obama to finally take a stand on gay marriage.  The New York Times article today (here) explains the situation very well, but it goes like this.  There are two cases which challenge the constitutionality of the Federal Defense of Marriage Act.  In previous challenges the Obama Administration has defended the constitutionality based in part on precedent in the circuits in which those cases arose.  These two cases are in the Second Circuit that has no precedent so the Obama Administration should be telling the court how they think the court should approach the issue.  There is clearly an opportunity for the Obama Administration to help the court rule that the Federal Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional.  It will take an amount of courage that President Obama has been only summoned on a very few occasions.  The oath of office that President Obama took was to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.  We should all encourage him to take a firm stand in favor of the Constitution and against bigotry and discrimination.

You can send emails to President Obama here.  Do it!!

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal