Notes on America, equality and this President

As you may or may not have heard, President Obama had an interview today with ABC News for tomorrow's episode of "Good Morning America." In it, he is quoted rather famously already as saying he supports equal rights for same-sex couples to get married.

It's already huge news.

Herewith, notes and thoughts on this little--sooon to be big?--episode:

--In the next 24 hours, at least, it's going to get even bigger, too, as more and more news outlets and commentators announce and discuss it.

--Coming on the heels, as it does, of the trashing of these equal rights in North Carolina yesterday, it's sure to be an even bigger topic.

--Funny thing is, if it weren't for Vice President Joe Biden announcing this past Sunday that he was squarely for same-sex equality on marriage rights and all other, this interview and announcement wouldn't have occurred.

--I think the common feeling was that he--the President--would "sit on the sidelines" on this issue, so to speak, wait until the election was over and then announce, whether re-elected or not. This took courage, no matter how you feel about him and no matter your stance on the issue.

--Now everyone who was already against this President, especially the ones who are religious and/or who think he's out to destroy America, literally, in a lot of cases, will jump all over this.

--We Americans have always, always prided ourselves on our belief in "equal rights." From the beginning of the nation, we announced we were for equal rights, sure. We know that. But we have never, really, been a country of equal rights.

Equal rights, at the beginning of this nation, meant all landed males were equal. The wealthy, white males.

Later--much, much later--we reluctantly--very reluctantly--gave women the right to vote. Sure, it was hundreds of years later and sure, they had to fight for it but we finally, fianlly let them--women--vote.

They still weren't equal since, as we know, to this day, they earn less than males in the same work but they're closer.

Then there were African-Americans, Blacks, and heaven knows we weren't going to let them be "equal" to us for hundreds of years.

Now, it's same-sex couples. And all they want are equal rights. To marry. To commit to one another. And in this way, should anything happen to them, and for tax purposes, they'd be equal to the rest of us.

And too many of us just can't stand for that, can we?

Ironically, too, it's a great deal of religious people who are against it.

Imagine that--religious people, people of faith, against others being equal under the law.

It's mind-boggling.

Even though our own US Constitution has an "Equal Protections" clause written into the 14th Amendment, guaranteeing everyone "equal protection under the laws," here we are, years later, fighting for that "equal protection" and "equal rights."

Crazy.

And now, all kinds of people--Right Wingers, Republicans, Catholics, religious fundamentalists, lots of Southerners and untold more groups of people who either don't like or just out-and-out hate this president are going to come down on him--and hard--for this announcement. He will be reviled in churches. It's going to get ugly. It’s likely to get really ugly, at least for some people and groups.

For a lot of people, they’ll smell blood in the water, so to speak, so they’ll going to go after this President for this position.

I think President Obama figured now that his Vice President took a stand, he was forced into doing so. He had equivocated for some time on it, really. I think he also assumed he’d say it now, try to get it out of the way and move on.

Here’s hoping he’s right on this and that it will go away and won’t doom his chances for re-election come November.

The last thing we need for the middle- and lower-classes—most of America—is an extremely wealthy Right Winger who was forced to be Right Wing by his political party who doesn’t have the courage of his convictions and who also, by the way, keeps his own large holdings of money outside his own nation, in the Cayman Islands and in Switzerland, country be damned.

Links: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/obama-sex-marriage-legal-16312904; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Protection_Clause