And there is a big part of me that likes Obama very much *specifically* because I LOVE his kick-ass wife.

I swear she was cheered as loudly if not more loudly in Wilmington than he was. And then we all sang her Happy Birthday. It was a beautiful moment.

Born 1919, it says. Holy cow! Yeah, I always assumed he was much... Bob Seger, that's who I sometimes mix him up with. Even still, though. He was in his 50s in the 60s.

My favorite Cheney headline wasn't an Onion one, but was in similar vein: Cheney to Join Wolfram & Hart

My impression of Obama's stance on LGBT issues is that he's generally inclusive and will push for things like a repeal of DADT and legally equivalent civil unions where pragmatic fair treatment issues are raised, but that religious hangups about the word "marriage" will keep him silent about DOMA and Proposition 8-style legislation. I'll settle for tangible gains, as him not wanting to admit that a legally equivalent civil union is in fact a marriage in name as well will count for diddly-squat if we actually have all the legal rights associated with marriage.

I just don't get all this "unchanged for thousands of years" rhetoric about the meaning of marriage. Who's the genius who came up with this piece of bullshit, and why is everyone hopping on board? NOTHING about human culture has been unchanged for thousands of years, including women's role in the family, "personal" relationships with god, and, um, you get the point!

Okay, that was tangential. Sorry. I think Matt's post is well-reasoned and I think I agree with him.

religious hangups about the word "marriage" will keep him silent about DOMA and Proposition 8-style legislation.

He said more than once during the campaign that he opposed Prop 8.

And I'm of the mind that it's the woman's right to choose all by her damned self.

Me, too.

But at the end of the day, speaking only for myself, I can't fault him for putting it in terms that were more likely to get him elected, nor do I think that choosing to do so was a sneaky way of undermining women's rights or tromping all over the separation of church and state.

YpoliticalinterpretationMV

I just don't get all this "unchanged for thousands of years" rhetoric about the meaning of marriage. Who's the genius who came up with this piece of bullshit, and why is everyone hopping on board?

Especially bible-based people! I mean, really.

I can't get into the other stuff.

He said more than once during the campaign that he opposed Prop 8.

Laga said in Bitches that she was robocalled by his side to vote for it.

I had no CLUE Pete Seeger was that old! The picture in the link is from 1944, performing for Eleanor Roosevelt as a "noted folk singer"! I thought he was standard issue 60's era folkie, age-wise. IE, radicalized 20-something heir-of-Woody-Guthrie, not fellow-of-Woody-Guthrie.

He worked with the Smithsonian researchers who were gathering recordings of old-timers singing old-timey music in the late 1930s/early 1940s. I knew his music as a kid, of course, but didn't find out about him as a dissenter/activist until I took a college class on the Hoover-era FBI. One of the articles we read was about how the FBI helped to get the Weavers blacklisteded after they had their top-ten hits in the late '40s/early '50s. Between Lee Hays and Pete Seeger, they had enough Communist Party connections from the 1930s to doom them in the McCarthy era.

If you get a chance, PBS had an American Masters documentary on Pete that covers all this.

I love Pete Seeger, and while he looks great for 89, he does look, well, like an old man. And that makes me sad, because we won't have him for much longer. And I love him!