[twitter]There are times when conventional wisdom of a society changes.

1500 years before Columbus and Magellan, the Greeks had done calculations proving the Earth was a sphere. In fact, they had correctly estimated the circumference of our planet within a few hundred miles.

Unfortunately, learning and intellect went out of fashion in Europe between 400 and 1200 AD. The storehouses of Greek knowledge were lost to Western society with the advent of the Dark Ages. Sea monsters and Vikings ruled the seas, and ships that ventured too far from shore were sure to fall off the edge of a flat Earth.

When Barack Obama said “I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” he was the first American President to publicly say what generations of people already believed, and what nations around the world had already made legal.
What he did was open a window on the Dark Ages of politics in America. It was a headline grabbing statement because the leadership had been so backasswards for so long.

For many, it was a breath of fresh air, for others it was a declaration of war.

The problem is not in what Obama is saying, the problems will come from his opponents. The Flat Earth Society (Christian Conservatives) will be making this an election issue of extreme importance. Fox Nation already had “Obama Declares War On Marriage” headlines on their website minutes after the announcement.

But, just as Kings and Queens had no jurisdiction to legislate the world was flat (it either was or it wasn’t, a law couldn’t make it so), the President of the USA, cannot make laws pertaining to gay marriage. It’s a state issue.

The legal issues surrounding same-sex marriage in the United States are complicated by the nation’s federal system of government. … many aspects of marriage law affecting the day to day lives of inhabitants of the United States are determined by the states, not the federal government, and the Defense of Marriage Act does not prevent individual states from defining marriage as they see fit.
[source]

And therein lies the rub: gay marriage will be an election issue in America. People will go to the polls and vote Romney or Obama based on whether or not they believe Barack and Mitt should be able to get married if they want to – and that’s wrong.

Obama’s leadership on the issue is important to help reflect a public sentiment that has made Glee and Modern Family top tv shows. It’s an important point in history to mark the ending of the Dark Ages, but it should not be an election issue federally. Economics, foreign policy, health policy, education, jobs programs, tax reform – those are things Americans should be weighing their Presidential candidates on, not gay marriage.

if you have a problem with gay marriage, it’s going to become your problem. It doesn’t matter whether you’ve come to that view for simple homophobic reasons or more nuanced intellectual or religious ones. It doesn’t even matter whether you’re right or wrong. Either way, you are lashing yourself to a hopeless losing cause, and not the kind that people forget about. There will come a time — not this year or next, but sometime in the next decade or two — when your position today will be just as embarrassing to you as if you’d taken a firm stand against interracial marriage in 1980. When that happens, I can almost guarantee that you’ll change your tune in public, whether or not you actually change your mind. So why not save yourself a lot of stress and get it over with now?
[Mechanical Brain]

In other words, everyone else has already figured out the earth is round.

The marriage of Ellen and Portia DeGeneres has no more affect on the validity and strength of my relationship than the destructive foolishness of Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries. My marriage is my marriage, your marriage is your marriage, and may they both grow and last together in happiness and love.

The Earth is round. People should be allowed to love and marry. The sun rises in the East. 2 + 2 = 4. All facts.

Whether or not personal taxes should increase, corporate subsidies should decrease, and America should invest in across the board health care? Those are debates worth having.