Over on the Volokh Conspiracy Ilya Somin has some very astute “Reflections on Obama’s misrepresentation of his position on same-sex marriage,” referring to David Axelrod’s bombshell admission that in his campaign Obama routinely lied about his opposition to same sex marriage — what Time Magazine described as “A striking admission of political dishonesty from the keeper of the Obama flame.”
One of the most striking of these deceptions was Obama’s wrapping his dishonesty in the mantle of religion. “The president,” as Somin writes, “even went so far as to claim that his supposed opposition to same-sex marriage was motivated by religious considerations.” As Time summarized Axelrod’s account,”
Obama told Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church that marriage could only extend to heterosexual couples. “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman,” Obama said at the time. “Now, for me as a Christian — for me — for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.”
On National Review Online Andrew Johnson cited earlier examples of Obama’s faith-justified lie.
Obama’s use of faith to explain his opposition to same-sex marriage dates back to his bid for Illinois’s Senate seat in 2004. The New York Times notes that Obama began to cite religion as the reason for his position on the issue during his race against Republican Alan Keyes, suggesting that it was part of an effort to court black voters who generally opposed the redefinition of marriage. During a debate with Keyes, when pushed to explain his position on the matter, Obama emphasized his faith.
“What I believe, in my faith, is that a man and a woman when they get married are performing something before God, and it’s not simply the two persons who are meeting,” he said. He went on to praise then-president George W. Bush for his “healthy” reversal in supporting civil unions, a position candidate Obama agreed with.
Elsewhere on the Senate campaign trail, Obama echoed that position, saying he opposed same-sex marriage but not civil unions. “The term ‘marriage’ itself has strong religious roots and a strong tradition that means something special to people in this country,” he told reporters.
I posted a comment on Somin’s post this morning noting that I found Obama’s lies about his faith more revealing than his lies about same ex marriage, which led another commenter, JMan 20788, to reply, “Perhaps it would be more revealing if you would explain your position rather than relying on not very subtle implications of what is being “reveal[ed]” here.”
Since he asked, I then posted the following:
Excuse me. I thought it was obvious. Using his supposed Christian belief to justify his supposed belief in the sanctity of marriage as between a man and a woman is a more profoundly offensive lie than simply lying about his claimed (at the time) opposition to same sex marriage. Especially now, with all his sanctimonious warnings that we should avoid getting on our Christian high horse to condemn Muslims when in the past all sorts of equally bad things were justified in the name of Christ. Maybe he should say: “We should not get on our high horse to condemn the way others [he wouldn’t name Muslims] treat gays when right here in our home country our own president, namely, me, just the other day used Christ to justify discriminating against gays.” Of course, we shouldn’t blame him for that because he knew that anybody who knew anything knew he was lying.
