The website for the Obama transition, change.gov, is up and running and it has an in-depth and comprehensive directory of websites explaining the agenda of our President-elect. I must say that I was afraid that I might experience "buyer's remorse" after voting because it is clear to me that I am to the left of "American's Most Wanted Liberal Senator," but after reading through the policy choices of the Obama administration, I am pretty sure that the direction Mr. Obama will put this country in is the exact direction I want to go in.
This is slightly off-topic, but I am really heartened by the emphasis on common sense governance in this agenda. The agenda is truly pragmatic. It does not try to force theories into practice, but instead looks at the problems America is beset by and offers solutions that are proven and practical.
Unfortunately, one issue of recent importance gets nary a sentence ascribed to it, and I feel that it is a glaring issue. It is the issue of how marriage is defined. Mr. Obama was somewhat wishy-washy on the issue of marriage during the campaign, and so I used the "By The People" form to fill out a "Feature Request" on gay marriage. The entire text is below.
This is the text as I submitted it.
Marriage
Marriage is an inherently tricky and subtle subject because it is currently a combination of two things. On one hand, marriage is a sacred covenant between two loving individuals and their God. On the other hand, marriage is a binding legal contract that confers certain benefits on the two participants in the eyes of the law. These two facets of marriage are not entwined but are in fact completely separable.
They should be.
Marriage, and gay marriage in particular, are hot-button issues in America today. However, the arguments that marriage should be defined in a traditional sense (i.e. between one man and one woman) only deal with the religious facet of marriage. To my knowledge, there is not one "Traditional Marriage" group that wants to deny gays and lesbians the right to marry because they want to deny them legal benefits. Instead, all of them are concerned that gay marriage is evil and against the will of their God.
I once saw a billboard that said, "Nice wedding, when is the marriage? -God." The intent of the advertisement was to entice couples to not just go to their local Justice of the Peace to get a marriage license, but also to celebrate their marriage before God. An integral part of the billboard's message was the absence of God from the legal proceeding of obtaining a marriage license.
There is no reason that the legal facet of marriage, the only facet of marriage that the government has lawful jurisdiction over, should be confined to a definition between one man and one woman. There are two reason to ensure that the definition of marriage remains open to the enjoining of any two consenting adults: to deny gay and lesbian couples the benefits of marriage is a heinous form of discrimination that should not be tolerated in the 21st Century; and to restrict the definition of marriage for a religious purpose is to blatantly ignore the separation of Law and God.
I feel that ensuring the civil liberties of all Americans are as inclusive as possible and passionately protected is the fundamental responsibility of the citizens of a country that proclaims "liberty and justice for all."
After writing the introduction to this diary, I realized there was one more point I wanted to make. In times past, when a subset of the citizens of this great country were being treated unjustly, unfairly despite (or even because of) the law, the Federal Government has passed legislation to prohibit these practices. Most of you are probably thinking of the two glaring instances where this was done in the past: with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the passage of the Violence Against Women Act in 1995. This issue of marriage, and the inability of gay couples to be married, represents another chapter in the life of discrimination in America, though the magnitude is admittedly far less than the two instances cited above. However, the Federal Government should again stand up for his entire constituency and ensure liberty and justice for all by ensuring that sexual orientation is no longer a basis for discrimination.