Dear Mr. President,

Here’s what I did today instead of blogging.

June 12, 2009

President Barack Obama
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama,

I have been a supporter of yours since I could vote. I was a student at Augustana College when you spoke there in 2005, shortly after your election to the Senate. There are things you said in that speech that resonate with me even today, and I hoped even then that you’d turn your intellect and oratorical skills toward the Presidency. When you announced your Presidential candidacy, I was among the thousands rejoicing around the courthouse in Springfield. When you took office in January, I knew it would usher in the amazing changes that you promised over the course of your campaign. The months since have been rocky. I do not envy you your position, trying to save the nation from two mismanaged wars, a faltering economy, collapsing industries, a disgraceful healthcare system, and the threat of a global pandemic. You have done much already to clean up the mistakes of the previous administration and to keep the country afloat despite rough and uncertain waters.

And over these difficult months, I’ve questioned some of your decisions. I think the nation collectively dodged a bullet when Tom Daschle declined the nomination to head the Department of Health and Human Services, given his history with unproven and often unsafe “alternative” medicine. I’ve wondered why the tax cuts for the wealthy have not been rolled back, why I hear that military tribunals are once again being considered for Guantanamo detainees, and why the government can’t just give some stimulus money directly to the middle class citizens who need it. But through my questioning, I’ve always thought that you had the country’s best interests in mind, and that your actions have been a measured and thoughtful, rather than radical and sweeping, approach to progressive changes.

But today, I read that your Department of Justice has filed a brief defending the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). I realize that this falls well within your repeated statements that you do not support same-sex marriage, but instead support granting marriage protections to same-sex couples under some different name (civil unions). I find that position questionable enough, but I supported you in spite of it—surely, it was better than your predecessor and opponent’s positions on the matter. More recently, you said that you “don’t think it makes sense for the federal government to get in the business of determining what marriage is.” Again, I’d prefer a more proactive stance (and I’m sure your legions of supporters in the GLBT community would as well), but this recent defense of DOMA gives the lie to that noninterventionist position. If the federal government is not in the business of determining what marriage is, then why throw your support behind a federal law which attempts to do precisely that?

Even that might be forgivable, albeit profoundly hypocritical, were it not for the arguments used in defense of DOMA, which read like hateful right-wing talking points. Your administration compared same-sex marriage to incest and marrying children! That’s one ‘marriage to a pet’ citation away from a Rick Santorum stump speech. Further, the brief argues that same-sex marriage would be prohibitively costly to the country, that DOMA is constitutional in spite of Equal Protection clauses and the Fourteenth Amendment, that homosexuals have the right to marry, as long as they marry people of the opposite sex, and effectively ensures that your administration sees homosexuals as second-class citizens, since they are not “entitled to certain federal benefits.”

This position, Mr. President, is disgusting, deplorable, and hateful. If the federal government is not in the business of defining marriage, then keep the federal government neutral. Allow DOMA to be overturned, if that is the court’s decision. Don’t engage in doublespeak on this level, claiming to be a friend of gays and lesbians one night and comparing them to statutory rapists another.
Your previously-affirmed neutrality would be a better option, but still a nonsensical one. I cannot fathom why the right to marriage, a civil institution, would be afforded to some citizens and denied to others. Nor can I fathom how anyone could argue that this denial is not discriminatory. The case against marrying children is based on the matter of consent; children cannot marry because they cannot legally enter into contractual agreements or consent to sexual activity with adults. The case against incestuous marriage is less legally defensible, but can at least be reasonably supported. What is the case against same-sex marriage? Can it be made without falling back on fallacious comparisons to incest or appeals to religion or tradition? And if such a case can be made against same-sex marriage, a case which outlines why two consenting adults should not have the right to enter into a civil marriage contract based on their combination of genders, then why would that same case not apply to civil unions, or any other separate-but-equal rebranding of marriage? If it would be costly or dangerous to allow same-sex couples to marry, then wouldn’t it be equally costly or dangerous to allow them to form civil unions? Why haven’t Massachusetts, Connecticut, or Iowa been undone by those pitfalls? If same-sex marriage would bankrupt the nation, why didn’t it bankrupt California, and why would California not annul the 18,000 marriages which had been conducted during the period of legality? If the financial risk is so great that it warrants the denial of basic civil rights to a minority and the establishment of a second-class citizenry, then why are so many states jumping on the legalization bandwagon?

I am not homosexual, bisexual, or transgendered myself, Mr. President. My rights are not in any danger, but I am committed to the equal treatment of all persons under the law. I cannot see any reason to deny any consenting adult the right to marry any other consenting adult, and I would hope that a reasonable and intelligent man like you would recognize that the position against same-sex marriage is simply untenable. If it were otherwise, then your administration would not have to resort to defending DOMA with the same logical fallacies peddled by the right wing. It makes me happy to see that other state courts and legislations have recognized the flaws in the anti- equality position, and I feel confident that the vast majority of the United States will recognize same-sex marriage in my lifetime. Progress marches on, as it always has. I only wish you could be leading the parade instead of standing in its way.

And yes, it’s going in the mail tomorrow. There’s a lot of things I haven’t quite agreed with from this administration, but none of them have caused me to write an actual letter (I did e-mail about Daschle’s appointment as head of Health and Human Services, though). This, however, is utterly outrageous.

For more outrage, see this and this and this and this and this.

Update: Well, at least the Bushite rhetoric makes sense, now. Of course, that doesn’t really make it any better.