In the wake of yesterday's landslide passing of Amendment One in North Carolina, which limits the legal recognition of partnership rights to those of "one man and one woman," President Obama has finally come out of the cozy political closet and boldly announced his support for same-sex marriage. When asked in a press conference today for his reaction to the president's proclamation, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney--well--reacted as Mitt Romney does. He's against it and essentially wishes the cute, naive little president good riddance in November's election.
But what about Ron Paul, Big Media's black sheep who is, actually, more popular than ever thanks to his relentlessly powerful message of fiscal responsibility and personal liberty? Let's not go into the arduous details of his "chance" of securing the Republican nomination in spite of his crazy delegate-having and caucus-cockpunching, but instead focus on his own solid stance on same-sex marriage. In his response to the question posed by Neil Cavuto on Fox Business today, Paul reiterated his view that while he personally believes marriage is between one man and one woman (snore), he also fundamentally believes the government should stay out of our business and not be the ones deciding what actually constitutes a marriage. In other words, he'd rather marriage not be a legal institution at all, but rather some hazy kind of churchy one. In theory, this sounds pretty great: no more laws concerning marriage at all! Polygamy finally WINS! But is he serious about the church thing? And what does this mean in terms of right-here-right-now leadership?
If there's one thing Ron Paul is, it's consistent. His views DON'T CHANGE, and this is both a major strength and weakness for someone trying to become president in 2012. While we need a leader who doesn't "flip-flop," we also need someone flexible and accessible enough to listen to us and our ever-evolving desires for the direction of our country. In order to get there, though, we need that person to know which steps to take in order to firmly guide us out of the bureaucratic purgatory we now inhabit. We know he blasts his fellow conservatives out of the ironic waters for his lofty economic ideas and severe foreign policies, but is holding steadfast to the notion of eliminating marriage laws altogether a practical approach to such a personal, relevant issue of today?
Okay, we get it, Ron, you are a strict Federalist and Constitutionalist and want everyone to tend their own fields and school their own kids and marry themselves before their own gods in their own churches they built with their own two hands, but this isn't 1779, dude! Neither is it 3012. We're living in a minefield of laws and running into red tape every time we take a shit; this is a system which must be deconstructed carefully if it's going to be deconstructed with any grace at all (if that's what we're aiming for, that is). It seems he doesn't push this or any of his social issue stances to the forefront because he truly doesn't believe they are as important as our country's money problems. The man's got priorities, sure, but that approach is sinking him fast because it's really all connected. Legal marriage--not just marriage, but domestic partnership--is more than a license number on a piece of paper; it is the institution of being honored as a unit with its own rights in regards to family/children, health, and yes, money decisions. If the glass pane of legal marriage and anything resembling it were simply smashed, where would all these shards fall? The way our society views marriage and the resulting rewards (and punishments) from it are not absolute, but neither are they going to go away overnight if he becomes president. So where does that leave us now?
Sadly, the Republican alternative to Paul's amorphous lawlessness is Romneyland, where we would just have to accept (in our dear North Carolina, at least) that same-sex couples or even unmarried-by-choice heterosexuals cannot have even the hospital visitation rights that their legally wed heterosexual counterparts have. There we must confront a great infringement on individual liberty and the consequent civil rights divide. Ron Paul should be swooping in with jazz hands here, but the seeming unlikelihood of him realistically picking up where Romney leaves off is a major downfall for him in this campaign. If he indeed wanted to leave the marriage issue solely to the states, then we're certainly seeing what happens when some stuck-in-their-ways religion-based states (*ahem* North Carolina *ahem*) are left to make these basic quality-of-life decisions for all their individual residents. Paul preaches individual and state rights above all else, but in this case, which are stronger? When the two cannot reconcile, at what point should the federal government step in and defend the huge landscape of "unconventional," marginalized individuals in our diverse states?
I certainly realize this can go the other way, and as Ron Paul and those in agreement with him on this believe, that if the federal government decides these issues, then they can go on to decide every other issue, and BLAM we're suddenly in 1984. But I don't agree that it's quite the mudslide he thinks it is. What's so wrong with making the federal government the open and individual-friendly entity (like recognizing heroin users and prostitutes and raw milk drinkers as citizens, for a change) and allowing states to restrict and determine the more localized issues for themselves? That way, everybody pretty much gets the kind of freedom they want.
The bottom line is that, yes, Ron Paul is largely supported by the young, intellectual, economically-aware grassroots population, but he's losing bigtime support when it comes to these key social issues, namely same-sex marriage and women's reproductive rights. The truth is that Obama's newfound, as yet theoretical support for gay marriage is going to boost his appeal, but it doesn't change his otherwise pretty dismal record of action (i.e. corporate bailouts, more troops in Afghanistan, more Patriot Act broohaha). Of course even this issue won't match the batshit crazy hard-on America had for him in 2008, which means the voting majority this year is going to be the religious right, who simply wants the dang commie out of office. In order to get the best of both worlds, it's the young, intelligent and generally freedom-loving yet practical Obama supporters that Paul needs to win over, and that will only happen if he recognizes that the moral issues he considers secondary are actually enormous parts of his constituents' lives. The rights to legally share our lives with the people of our choosing and have children how and when we want to are not the stuff of high political equations or conspiracy theories: they are the stuff of us. So get with it, Ron Paul, and turn some of those nebulous ideals into accessible plans of action for today's youth. We want a president who truly is looking out for our basic individual and human rights, not just letting those of our loudmouth Christian neighbors rule.
