Obama and gay marriage: It can’t be about votes
“For me, personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.”
With these fateful words President Obama spelt out his personal support for gay marriage. The American television networks cleared their schedules for the announcement. And It was big news all over the world.
But most Jamaicans will probably have been shocked by the news. On the one hand, President Obama is a man widely admired in Jamaica, as he is around the world. On the other hand, he is coming out with a statement which is contrary to most Jamaicans’ deeply held beliefs. The disquiet in Jamaica was reflected in the pronouncements of church leaders.
Typical comments by Jamaican churchmen were: “We believe that God ordained marriage for man and woman and nothing has changed and nothing should change.” This from the Reverend Lenworth Anglin, executive chairman of the Church of God in Jamaica.
“We are not sure why he would go to that length,” pronounced Bishop Joseph Adegold, president of the Independent Churches of Jamaica. And the Reverend Rennard White, president of the Jamaica Association of Evangelicals, said bluntly “I wasn’t expecting that.”
Some have hinted that President Obama only said what he did to attract rich homosexual donors. But the truth is that his position on gay marriage carries a big political risk. North Carolina (which is an important swing state in the upcoming presidential election) had, only the day before the president’s announcement, voted emphatically against making gay marriage legal.
Currently, gay marriage is only legal in a handful of American states. African-American and Hispanic voters are key constituencies for Obama and they are strongly against gay marriage. If it was just a case of the electoral maths, it would have made sense for Obama to keep his mouth shut on the issue.
So you have to believe Obama has come out in favour of gay marriage because ultimately he believes it is the right thing to do. One of the most telling things he said in explaining his change of mind was that his daughters, Malia and Sasha, had friends who had same- sex parents. He believed his daughters, as they grew up, would not understand if their friends’ parents did not have the same rights as other couples.
And President Obama talking about his children gives the key to where the debate on gay rights is going. The polls show that large numbers of Americans are still against gay marriage. But young Americans are much more favourable than those over 30.
They see gay equality as a civil rights issue. So the tide in America is moving slowly and inevitably in favour of gay rights, including gay marriage.
Jamaicans are not alone in their hostility to the concept of gay marriage. Here in Britain Prime Minister Cameron has had to retreat on efforts to bring in legal gay marriage because of hostility from his own party.
But it is worth noting that, although it is not called marriage, Britain has “civil partnerships” which give gay and lesbian couples all the legal benefits of marriage. So although Cameron has encountered resistance to actually calling it marriage, the principle of legal gay equality is accepted here in the UK.
Jamaica is entitled to its own laws and customs. But in the 21st century, outright hostility to gay equality is going to be ever more difficult to maintain.
Diane Abbott is the British Labour party spokeswoman on Public Health
