Who Obama Lost with Same Sex Marriage Endorsement

1. Independents President Obama's marriage announcement elated his base, but more moderate voters may be leaving him at the altar. According to Gallup's latest polling, the President's endorsement of same-sex "marriage" is a costly one--especially among Independent voters. Forty percent of adults say his position will affect their votes--and not the way Democrats had hoped. Of the 40%, 26% of adults said  they would be less likely to vote for Obama. What hurts more, from a campaign standpoint, is the number of Independents the President stands to lose from his "evolution." Twenty-three percent were instantly turned off by his new position and said they would be less likely to vote for him in November. As far as Gallup analyst Jeffrey Jones is concerned, the agenda is a "net minus" for Obama. Liberal ally Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) agrees. There was "no political calculus in this," she said on Fox News Sunday, "because it's not smart." 2. Black Christians And according to a growing number of black pastors, it's not biblical either. From Rev. Emmett Burns's church in Baltimore to Dr. Ken Hutcherson's in Washington State , the message from the pulpit was simple: we respect the President, but we cannot support what he has done. In an article about the storm brewing between the President and the African-American church, the New York Times highlighted a call that the White House made to pastors after his endorsement. "About two hours after declaring his support for same-sex 'marriage' last week, President Obama gathered eight or so African-American ministers on a conference call to explain himself... The ministers, though, were not all as enthusiastic. A vocal few made it clear that the President's stand on gay marriage might make it difficult for them to support his reelection." Even Republicans are starting to remember what a potent issue marriage can be in the electorate. Leaders like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) showed some strong reaction over the weekend to the President's agenda. "It did kind of bother me... that he used the justification for [redefining marriage] in a biblical reference... And I'm like: What version of the Bible is he reading?... We understand sin, and if we believe it's sin, we still understand that people sin. And we understand that we are not out there preaching some sort of hateful dogma against people. But that doesn't mean that we have to go ahead and give up our traditions. We've got 6,000 years of tradition. There's a lot of stability, even beyond religion, there's stability in the family unit. Just from an anthropological point of view, the family is a really important thing. We shouldn't just give up on it." 3. Marriage Supporters As the President's grasp on voters slips, so does his team's grip on campaign ethics. The Wall Street Journal is uncovering some shocking details about the intimidation tactics the President is using against Romney supporters. Last month, the Obama campaign launched a hit list called "Keeping the GOP Honest," aimed at destroying the businesses of Republican donors. One by one, the website listed Gov. Romney's largest contributors and publicly smeared them, and in some instances posted the citizens' personal information. "The attacks are working," said businessman Frank Vanderslook, whose business lost hundreds of clients after the Obama campaign accused him of being "a bitter foe of the gay rights movement." While these dirty tactics may help the campaign in the short-term, the damage  to the republic is irreversible. Our system of government works because people are able to participate in the voting process and the public square. When you cut citizens off with threats and marginalization, as the Left attempts to do, it undermines the effectiveness of the peaceful transfer of power from one party to another. It also undermines the President's credibility. "The dirt-digging exercise," which was so sleazy it included rummaging around donors' divorce files, "reflects the character of President Obama's reelection campaign," the Journal criticized, "as well as what's really behind his drive for more 'transparency' in political donations."

African-American Church Leaders Condemn Obama For Gay Marriage Support

Reporting by Derek Valcourt

BALTIMORE (WJZ)– Just days after President Barack Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage, pastors and priests around Maryland took to their own pulpits with their reaction– and in some cases– condemnation of the president. Derek Valcourt explains the president’s comments have folks on both sides of the issue fired up.

Both sides hope the president’s position helps sway votes in their favor when the issue hits Maryland’s ballot this November. “I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama said.

 When Obama announced that his position on same-sex marriage had evolved, it outraged some African-American pastors like Pastor and Del. Emmett Burns. “He has said to his base, African-Americans, ‘I am going against your beliefs and your thoughts,’” Burns said. He’s so opposed to same-sex marriage, he told church members he will no longer support the president and now predicts Obama will lose the election because of it.

He and many other leaders are pouring their energies into gathering the signatures needed to put Maryland’s same-sex marriage law on the November ballot.

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How do you Explain the Gospel in Five Minutes - Video (DA Carson)

The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. Ultimately, for both the unconverted Christian--the Gospel is the central message that stands between them and Christ, on any issue, including homosexual marriage. ho cannot submit him/herself to Biblical truth because he is not yet born again, or for the man who has rejected the truth of God in unrighteousness, and therefore , ultimately, for both the falsely converted Christian

D.A. Carson answers the question, "how do I explain the Gospel in two minutes," which he does briefly at about  3:20. His basic position,however, is that, due to Biblical illiteracy, the speaker and the listener do not agree on terms, such as "sin", "salvation" "redemption" "grace" and even "God" and "faith". He suggests an approach similar to Paul's approach to the pagan Greeks in Acts 17, beginning with God, creation, the fall, etc. At the end, he mentions several free and for-purchase resources, which are available HERE

Should Christians Oppose Same-Sex Marriage? Old Testament Relevance

from Michael Horton's blog

OK, so we know what Christian marriage is. We preach that, teach it, and expect believers to embrace Scripture’s instructions regarding sexual conduct, although we are still sinners who must continually repent, trust in Christ, and receive his pardon. Got it. But what about the public argument?

As I said in the last one, we aren’t authorized to speak in God’s name where he hasn’t spoken, but we are commanded to do so wherever he has. This is where it gets dicier, though. I’d like to frame my response, first off, in terms of two extremes that we have to avoid:

1. Treating references to homosexuality in the Old Testament as either irrelevant or directly applicable to the current question.
You see this in public debates of the issue, where extremists on both sides talk over (and past) each other. One thing they often share in common is interest in quoting passages from the Old Testament on the question. Then the person on the left reminds us that the sanction mentioned is stoning. “Do you want to stone gays?”, one shouts. “No, but I believe what the Bible says about homosexuality.” “Well, right next to that verse it says that you should stone disobedient children—Oh, and not eat pork, and not touch a woman who is having her period.” Bottom line: the skills of biblical interpretation are about equally as bad on both sides of the table.

The statements in Leviticus are part of the Mosaic covenant. They pertain uniquely to the covenant that God made with Israel as a nation. The laws that governed every aspect of private and public life, cult and culture, were a unique episode in redemptive history. Their divine purpose cannot be rationalized in terms of sanitation, public health, or personal well-being. The whole focus was on God and his desire to separate Israel from the nations, preparing the way for the Messiah to come from her womb. Therefore, there is no more biblical warrant for stoning homosexuals today than there is for avoiding Scottish cuisine.

If there’s every reason to distinguish these two covenants, we have to be very careful nonetheless that we don’t make the opposite interpretive blunder of contrasting the Old and New Testaments on the question of homosexual practice itself. I’ve heard of late several times committed Christians acknowledging that the Old Testament forbids it, but the New Testament is silent. It’s “mean Moses” versus “nice Jesus”: a familiar but completely baseless contrast. Affirming that the the civil laws are now obsolete doesn’t mean that the rationale explicitly given for some of these laws should be disregarded, especially when God singles some acts out not simply as dependent on God’s will for that time and place, but as “abominations.” Homosexuality is included in that list, as it is also in the New Testament (1 Cor 6:9; 1 Tim 1:10—right up there with “murders, enslavers, liars, and perjurers”). The church does not have the power of the sword in the new covenant. Nevertheless, God’s statement on the matter is pretty clear: he hates homosexuality. It violates the natural order—reflecting the extent to which fallen humanity will go to suppress the truth—even that which can be known by reason—in unrighteousness (Rom 1:18-32).

Jesus brings forgiveness of sins, not a new—supposedly easer, happier, more fulfilling law. In fact, he upbraids the lax view of divorce tolerated in his day. Jesus does not ground marriage between a man and a woman in the Mosaic covenant—or in the new covenant, but returns to the order of created nature: “He answered, ‘Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate’” (Mat 19:4-6).

It should be added that Paul’s point in Romans 1-3 is to sweep the whole world—Jew and Gentile—into a heap, condemned under the law, in order to announce that Christ is the Savior of all, Jew and Gentile, and justifies the ungodly who trust in him. We are all called to repent—lifelong repentance, in fact. In this, as in everything, we fall short; our imperfect repentance would be enough to condemn us if we weren’t clothed in Christ’s righteousness. However, to repent is to acknowledge that God is right and we are wrong—on the specifics of precisely where we want to assert our sovereignty.

Obama Gay Marriage Endorsement All for Hollywood's Money and Obama's Ego

What was the gay marriage endorsement really all about? Ignore the timelines about Joe Biden being a loudmouth and follow the money instead. On Monday, the day before the North Carolina vote, the Hollywood Reporter reported that the marriage question was hurting Obama among west coast donors. “It's safe to say that the longer Obama waits on the issue, the more frustrated the [movie] community will grow with him. Perhaps it won't cost him their votes, but it might slow the flow of cash and public rally appearances. That concern doesn't end with Hollywood … One in six of Obama's so-called bundlers – people who raise money in great stacks for the president's campaign – is gay, giving the issue great importance in his fiscal game.”

So on Monday, Obama was losing dollars on the Hollywood fundraising circuit. On Wednesday, he endorsed gay marriage. On Thursday, he flew to Hollywood for a fundraiser, where 150 donors paid $40,000 each to meet the Prez at the home of George Clooney. Coincidence?

Wait, there’s more! Within minutes of the ABC interview that broke the endorsement, the Pres Tweeted “Same-sex couples should be able to get married.” Later, he issued a photo of himself making the statement with the word (you guessed it) “history” flashed everywhere. Within 90 minutes, Obama’s re-election campaign had pulled in $1 million in donations, while it quickly rolled out a new attack ad calling Romney “backwards” on gay rights. The Hollywood Reporter again: “On June 6, the president will be at the SLS hotel in Beverly Hills for an LGBT fundraiser featuring a performance by Pink. (A sellout now is virtually guaranteed.) Obama will be at another LBGT fundraiser Monday in New York, featuring a performance by Ricky Martin.”

A Former Homosexual Speaks Out Part 2

Debating Homosexuality - Understanding Two Views

by peter sprigg

In recent years, activists pushing for a “gay rights” political agenda, such as the legalization of same-sex marriage and the overturning of the law against open homosexuality in the military, have become increasingly
virulent in their attacks upon social conservatives who oppose that agenda.

Examples of these attacks include a federal judge declaring that the passage of California’s Proposition 8 in 2008 could only have been motivated by hostility toward gay and lesbian individuals, and the 2010 announcement by the Southern Poverty Law Center that it classifies several pro-family organizations as “anti-gay hate groups.”

Such attacks reveal a fundamental misunderstanding (if not deliberate misrepresentation) of the beliefs, arguments, and motives of social conservatives. This misunderstanding arises from the existence of two
completely different paradigms, or fundamental ways of understanding the nature of homosexuality.

The “Gay Identity” Paradigm 


Gay activist groups, and a growing portion of major social institutions such as academia and the news media, have come to adopt a view of homosexuality we might call the “gay identity” paradigm. The foundations of the “gay identity” paradigm are these beliefs:

• Sexual orientation is an innate personal characteristic, like race.
• People are born gay.
• Gay people can never become heterosexual.
• Being gay is essentially no different from being straight, except for the gender to which one is sexually attracted.
• There is no harm in being gay.

Based on these beliefs (or, in many cases, unspoken presuppositions), gay activist groups declare, and some others have come to accept, that for someone to believe that heterosexuality is preferable to homosexuality is
equivalent to believing that one race is superior to another, and therefore represents a form of bigotry and even “hate” toward gays and lesbians as individuals.

However, this conclusion about critics of homosexuality cannot be valid unless the premises of the “gay identity” paradigm can be proven true; and it is not logical unless social conservatives are operating from the same paradigm.

In reality, the empirical case for the “gay identity” paradigm is extremely weak and is, in any case, subject to legitimate debate. Furthermore, what is beyond dispute is that social conservatives do not view homosexuality
from the perspective of the “gay identity” paradigm.

Therefore, it is not only unfair and misguided, but it is simply illogical to criticize the motives of social conservatives based on that paradigm.

What Is “Sexual Orientation?”
To deconstruct the “gay identity” paradigm, and understand the
alternative view which drives social conservatives, it is necessary to examine the actual nature of “sexual orientation.” Too often, it is assumed that “sexual orientation” is a unitary phenomenon whose
meaning is clear. This is not the case.

As all serious researchers in human sexuality understand, “sexual orientation” is an umbrella term for three quite different things. The first of these is one’s sexual attractions—is a person sexually attracted to people of the opposite sex, the same sex, or both? The second element of sexual orientation is sexual conduct—what sex acts does an individual choose to engage in, and with whom? The third element of sexual orientation is sexual self-identification—does an individual think of himself or herself, and/or publicly identify himself or herself to others, as “gay,” “lesbian,” “straight,” or “bisexual?


A “Homosexual Conduct” Paradigm
The “gay identity” paradigm is simplistic, since it is based on the assumption (which the research clearly shows to be false) that “sexual orientation” is a unitary characteristic. Under this view, people are either gay or not gay, so to criticize homosexuality is to denigrate some people for “who they are.”

Social conservatives approach the topic of homosexuality using a completely different paradigm—one that is more sophisticated, and more consistent with the research on human sexuality and sexual orientation, than the “gay identity” paradigm. This paradigm is based on the reality that same-sex attractions, homosexual conduct, and self-identification as “gay” are three separate (although related) matters which must be addressed separately.

For social conservatives, particularly when it comes to public policy debates related to homosexuality, homosexual conduct is by far the most important of the three elements of sexual orientation. Hence, we might refer to the social conservative approach to the issue of homosexuality
as a “homosexual conduct” paradigm, in contrast to the “gay identity” paradigm.

Understanding these two divergent paradigms is crucial to accurately understanding the position of social conservatives on the issue of homosexuality. Social conservatives do not believe or argue that “gay people are inferior,” as gay activists charge. What we believe and argue is that homosexual conduct is harmful—first and foremost to the people who engage in it, but also by extension to society at large.

Gay activists, and others who have accepted the “gay identity” paradigm, argue that the public policy debates revolve around whether “gay people are treated equally” to straight people. Social conservatives perceive
the issues at stake completely differently. They believe, without question, that gay people, as individuals, should and do enjoy all the same rights under the Constitution and its Bill of Rights as any other American. However, social conservatives perceive the key issue in public policy debates as being whether homosexual conduct and homosexual relationships should be discouraged; treated as entirely private (that is, neither discouraged nor affirmed); or actively protected, affirmed, and celebrated. The latter is what gay activists demand.


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