A reader writes:
Step back and think about it for a minute. The President and head of the Democratic Party just announced his support for gay marriage. The Republican nominee basically said, "Yes, the states can give benefits to domestic partnerships, but I can't support marriage." No fire-breathing response. No rhetoric that Obama is ruining America's values. He basically said that people differ on this issue and left it at that. That is the remarkable thing about today.
It's been roundly mocked. But it's integral to what has been happening in America. A reader writes:
Trying to be neither cynical or jaded, I do understand President Obama's evolving position.
My son is gay. I couldn't "hear" that for a period of time and I (finally) "evolved." I love him, gay, straight, bi … it doesn't matter. The same with gay marriage; it took me a bit of time to understand how important that he have all of the options in life that I was automatically awarded by virtue of being a heterosexual female. The bottom line becomes why would I want anything less for him than all options that are available to my other two children and myself?
Joe Biden is correct: it just comes down to love. What more can a mom ask for in her child's life?
Another writes:
I’m a straight, white guy. I went to an all-boys Catholic high school, where gay pejoratives were commonplace as put downs. I regularly used terms to belittle knowingly straight friends. Then a year out of high school one of my very closest friends came out.
We went to separate universities, so I had no idea what was new in his life when we went for a beer on a holiday break. I was shocked, then realized very shortly that (shock of shocks) nothing was different about him. He was the same solid and caring friend I’d had in high school. He just liked dudes. As we’ve aged and progressed into our careers, the similarities in our fairly boring lives are remarkable – so much so that the one difference, that his spouse is a dude, isn’t noticeable.
That my president has progressed on the same path as me – from the mindset that gay relationships are fundamentally different to one that sees and knows an example and recognizes that gay and straight relationships are fundamentally the same – is remarkable.
One small thing I only really noticed until tonight. This interview was conducted by two African-Americans, a man and a woman. It was a subtle touch. And a profound one.
[Re-posted from earlier today.]
I do not know how orchestrated this was; and I do not know how calculated it is. What I know is that, absorbing the news, I was uncharacteristically at a loss for words for a while, didn't know what to write, and, like many Dish readers, there are tears in my eyes.
So let me simply say: I think of all the gay kids out there who now know they have their president on their side. I think of Maurice Sendak, who just died, whose decades-long relationship was never given the respect it deserved. I think of the centuries and decades in which gay people found it 
impossible to believe that marriage and inclusion in their own families was possible for them, so crushed were they by the weight of social and religious pressure. I think of all those in the plague years shut out of hospital rooms, thrown out of apartments, written out of wills, treated like human garbage because they loved another human being. I think of Frank Kameny. I think of the gay parents who now feel their president is behind their sacrifices and their love for their children.
The interview changes no laws; it has no tangible effect. But it reaffirms for me the integrity of this man we are immensely lucky to have in the White House. Obama's journey on this has been like that of many other Americans, when faced with the actual reality of gay lives and gay relationships. Yes, there was politics in a lot of it. But not all of it. I was in the room long before the 2008 primaries when Obama spoke to the mother of a gay son about marriage equality. He said he was for equality, but not marriage. Five years later, he sees – as we all see – that you cannot have one without the other. But even then, you knew he saw that woman's son as his equal as a citizen. It was a moment – way off the record at the time – that clinched my support for him.
Today Obama did more than make a logical step. He let go of fear. He is clearly prepared to let the political chips fall as they may. That's why we elected him. That's the change we believed in. The contrast with a candidate who wants to abolish all rights for gay couples by amending the federal constitution, and who has donated to organizations that seek to "cure" gays, who bowed to pressure from bigots who demanded the head of a spokesman on foreign policy solely because he was gay: how much starker can it get?
My view politically is that this will help Obama. He will be looking to the future generations as his opponent panders to the past. The clearer the choice this year the likelier his victory. And after the darkness of last night, this feels like a widening dawn.
Chris Geidner traces the Obama administration's path to marriage equality. In retrospect, today is less of a departure for the administration than some might think.
Jon Rauch, as perceptive as ever:
The courts, as Obama, the former law professor, must be well aware, will take notice. Two big gay-rights cases–one challenging California's revocation of gay marriage, the other challenging the Defense of Marriage Act–are on their way toward the Supreme Court. With his switch from ambivalence to advocacy, Obama is sending a signal to the courts that the country is ready for gay marriage, giving them more cover to uphold it. Courts may not go by poll results, but they do like to stay within the mainstream. And Obama has just moved it.
Today on the Dish, Andrew broke down over Obama's public evolution on gay marriage, recanted his claim that Obama's shift wouldn't matter, took stock of the thinking that motivated anti-equality crusaders (follow-up here), looked in vain for Democratic hit men, and gagged at the Obama campaign's emails. We grabbed reax to Obama's big shift here and here, picked out the Christian heart in Obama's defense of equality, discovered a GIF tumblr about the event, tackled some terrible arguments against the President's position, picked out an apt historical comparison to North Carolina's retrograde vote, assessed whether Obama was sticking his political neck out, and looked at the tough position Romney was stuck in now. Romney was trapped on immigration as well, Ron Paul crept up on the GOP, the election wasn't over, and the radical right ate Lugar. Ad War Update here.
Andrew also compared the US and European approaches to recessions and austerity, defended a pundit's right to mock black studies and not get fired (critical follow-up here), and reissued the call for Dishterns: The Next Generation. We discovered the best gene, worried about the growing need for geoengineering, debunked the notion that dinosaurs farted there way to runaway climate change and extinction, and weighed the evidence that e-readers were good for the climate. Slideshows killed websites, Mark Zuckerberg delayed gratification ad infinitum, people bought (more or less) cardboard furniture, TSA profiling produced complex feelings for one reader, and raccoons boned. Ask Maggie Gallagher Anything here, Quotes for the Day here and here, Headlines of the Day here and here, Yglesias Nominee here, VFYW here, MHB here, and FOTD here.
– Z.B.
It’s of a simple variety:
“In the end the values that I care most deeply about and [Michelle] cares most deeply about is how we treat other people and, you know, I, you know, we are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated. And I think that’s what we try to impart to our kids and that’s what motivates me as president and I figure the most consistent I can be in being true to those precepts, the better I’ll be as a as a dad and a husband and hopefully the better I’ll be as president.”
“Treat others the way you would want to be treated.”
What is it about that that Christians cannot understand?
Some nerds threw a GIF party.
Romney's Super PAC clings to the "mommy wars" ahead of Mother's Day:
The Obama campaign counters one of Romney's most egregious big lies:
The campaign is also running a second round of Spanish-language ads in Colorado, Nevada and Florida. Meanwhile, the DNC capitalizes on Santorum's "low-key" endorsement of Romney:
Previous Ad War Updates: May 9, May 8, May 7, May 3, May 2, May 1, Apr 30, Apr 27, Apr 26, Apr 25, Apr 24, Apr 23, Apr 18, Apr 17, Apr 16, Apr 13, Apr 11, Apr 10, Apr 9, Apr 5, Apr 4, Apr 3, Apr 2, Mar 30, Mar 27, Mar 26, Mar 23, Mar 22, Mar 21, Mar 20, Mar 19, Mar 16, Mar 15, Mar 14, Mar 13, Mar 12, Mar 9, Mar 8, Mar 7, Mar 6, Mar 5, Mar 2, Mar 1, Feb 29, Feb 28, Feb 27, Feb 23, Feb 22, Feb 21, Feb 17, Feb 16, Feb 15, Feb 14, Feb 13, Feb 9, Feb 8, Feb 7, Feb 6, Feb 3, Feb 2, Feb 1, Jan 30, Jan 29, Jan 27, Jan 26, Jan 25, Jan 24, Jan 22, Jan 20, Jan 19, Jan 18, Jan 17, Jan 16 and Jan 12.
Naomi Schaefer-Riley doubles down on her dissing of black studies that got her fired:
[W]hy take my word for it? Scholars more learned than I have been saying the same thing for decades. In 1974, Thomas Sowell wrote that from the beginnings of the discipline, "the demands for black studies differed from demands for other forms of new academic studies in that they . . . restricted the philosophical and political positions acceptable, even from black scholars in such programs." Thirty-five years later in a piece for the Minding the Campus website, former Berkeley Prof. John McWhorter noted that little had changed: "Too often the curriculum of African-American Studies departments gives the impression that racism and disadvantage are the most important things to note and study about being black." My critics have suggested that I do not believe the black experience in America is worthy of study. That is not true. It's just that the best of this work rarely comes out of black studies departments.
In response, Brian Leiter makes the case for Riley's dismissal on grounds unrelated to race:
Making fun of doctoral dissertations by recent PhDs based on their titles and a few lines of an abstract? That's all she did, nothing more.
If she'd posted it on www.naomischaeferrileyblowhard.com no one would have noticed. But she was given a forum by CHE that she was supposed to share with adults and scholars, and that's what stunned people. The allegations of racism arise from the fact that one could have undertaken the same exercise with dissertation titles in most fields, even philosophy. (Think how much fun a malevolent fool like Schaefer Riley could have with recent dissertation titles from Princeton!) But Schaefer Riley chose a field rich with "hot button" issues…her failing is not really moral, but intellectual.
Riley addressed that charge in her op-ed: "Scores of critics on the site complained that I had not read the dissertations in full before daring to write about them—an absurd standard for a 500-word blog post." But a reader notes:
Her first post, even more comically, was entitled "The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations!" … which she hadn't.
And another reader makes a good point:
I know blogging is all about real time / quick response etc. But when you get something wrong because you responded too fast, you admit that. She had a chance to say she screwed up, and she didn't say she screwed up, she said, "There are not enough hours in the day or money in the world to get me to read a dissertation on historical black midwifery." So basically she is saying, I refuse to become informed enough about this to decide if it is a waste of time. Which is absolutely the opposite of what is supposed to go on in higher education.
The Dish 