Was Obama Being Helpful Or Freudian Slipping His Dictatorial Inner Desires?

“How religious institutions define and consecrate marriage has always been up to those institutions.  Nothing about this decision — which applies only to civil marriages — changes that.”

While the headline is a bit over the top - "Obama: I won't make churches to perform gay marraiges" - it does follow slightly from the Lightworker's very curious statement quoted above. Maybe the publication made a hash of the Lightworker's intended meaning. Maybe, the former constitutional law lecturer (not professor) was benignly explicating for his fellow Americans that the ruling in Windsor was actually very narrow, that it was essentially a ruling on denial/allowance of benefits rather than rights. Justice Kennedy The Court (simplifying) said that since New York has granted same-sex couples status to be married and claim benefits from being married, the federal government cannot deny those benefits. Despite Kennedy's lofty and moralistic tone, this ruling does not mandate certain rights, it can be looked at as a rather narrow states vs. federal government case. Maybe that is what the Lightworker meant, as if to say "Don't get all excited here folks..."

Somehow I doubt it. The Lightworker has not been shy about forcing religious institutions to do what they cannot and will not do for doctrinal reasons - provide birth control to employees who work in church institutions. And he has embroiled his administration in a large and nasty fight over it. Perhaps he now feels, after this ruling, that he can force religious institutions to do what they cannot and will not do for doctrinal reasons - perform same sex marriages. If that is the case, he is both woefully ignorant of the law at hand and he indeed has the inner authoritarian impulse that his most vibrant detractors have long claimed he has. This ruling doesn't come anywhere near addressing religious institutions and doesn't come anywhere near even the faintest notion that religious institutions ought to perform same sex marriages. In fact it doesn't even say that other states have to recognize same sex marriage. Voters and legislators in any state that has heretofore not legalized same sex marriage are free to do what they will, change or retain the status quo. How Obama got to churches from this ruling is truly puzzling. If he wasn't helpfully clarifying and if he even had a remote understanding of the ruling, he would have never have made the leap to churches if he wasn't somehow fixated on imposing his liberal secular orthodoxy upon religious institutions.

Hmmmmmm....