Tue, 06/02/2009 - 9:33pm — vastleft
"I think, you know, freedom means freedom for everyone," Cheney said in a speech at the National Press Club. "I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish, any kind of arrangement they wish."
"I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman [big applause at Rick Warren's megachurch], now for me as a Christian, it's also a sacred union, now God's in the mix [applause]."
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Small quibble
Obama is a Protestant, last time I checked, and Protestants see marriage as a contract between two mortals, not as a sacrament (as in the Catholic tradition). So it's incorrect to call marriage "sacred" from within his own tradition. (Most anti-gay marriage Protestants conveniently forget their tradition's important role in pioneering legal divorce and the rise of companionate marriage, so Obama is in good company in erroneously calling marriage "sacred.")
There was actually a big kerfuffle over this and the question of whether the Eucharist was a metaphor or in actuality the body and blood of Christ in Europe ca. 1517-1689, last time I checked. (Sorry to spoil the Unity
Pony
party!)
out-of-office
The point of the juxtaposition is receieved, the (important) difference being the stages in one career that each were at when the comments were made. It seems that most politicians don't seem to find common sense until they feel as though the risk is completely removed from stating what they really believe. Cheney is still a cad; I mean, did no one forget that the guy turned into a mute when Bush came out in support of a federal gay marriage ban?
Oh, and Obama is about as Protestant (religious) as I am. I know a lot of people get pissed when folks try to judge the committment of another to his or her religion, but to my eyes, he's a member of the famous politician's Church of Convenient Christianity if I ever saw it.
Neither of these two are brave or consistently honest men.
But, we've always been at war with Eastasia...
The record says otherwise re: career stages
Cheney said nearly identical words on the campaign trail in 2004:
While he didn't resign over it or give up (as he still hasn't) the states'-rights weaseling, he made it surprisingly clear that he disagreed with the guy at the top of the ticket:
Thanks for the link
Everything I'd read pointed to him having remained silent about the federal ban, but I guess that wasn't the case. In any case, that last paragraph you quoted is awful weak, as it doesn't point to him saying in any but the most weaslish of ways that he may have the complete opposite opinion as the president. Lastly, I still don't believe in the least that Obama is actually opposed to gay marriage (and nor did I believe it about Hillary), and I most certainly don't believe that if he is it's because of his convenient Christianity.
Again, I can see the point of the juxtaposition, but I think it's a shallow one, at best. Cheney is an all-around bad human being, most notably a shameless and sadistic sociopath, who is only ever human by accident, not only supporting the party of authoritarianism and intolerance, but being an influential member that written much of its modern policy. Most importantly, to support gay marriage out of some idea of liberty and freedom but then to also support something like out of torture for the same reason renders anything he has to say about anything else absolutely moot, as far as I'm concerned. He's not credible.
On the other side is Obama a coward and has always been a coward and will always be a coward unless he finds some kind of grand epiphany within his Convenient Christianity.
At least for me, this is 2% Less Sucky territory, and to me, it's not even that much. If given the choice between a coward and an unstable sociopath, I'll pass on both.
But, we've always been at war with Eastasia...
My interest is not in...
Rehabilitating Cheney's reputation. There's so much blood on his hands, it's hard to see his hands. There are precisely three things I would currently say in his "defense." He was publicly pro gay marriage when few politicians were. That's simply a fact. Second, I agree with Somerby that the left's STFU
meme is pathetic - we'd never tell former VP Gore that he had no right to speak -- criticize him for being wrong, and for being a war criminal, not for being on TV. And third, Chris Floyd makes a troublingly legitimate defense that the Bush-Cheney administration is less of an aberration than one would like to believe, that they didn't exactly invent American imperialism, etc.
Beyond that, I'd say he's as contemptible a figure as I've ever seen in American life.
As for Obama, he's pretty much admitted he's playing politics on gay marriage. One could diagnose that as gutlessness, narcissism, or sociopathy. Whatever it is, it ain't transcendence nor change.