Yesterday, the U.S. president said something that made his wacky, religious zealot-filled country a little bit more civilized and sane. Today, always-worth-reading politics writer Glenn Greenwald weighs in in The Guardian (a.k.a. The World’s Best Newspaper):
Obama’s public defense immediately enshrines same-sex marriage as the official orthodoxy of the Democratic party. It is inconceivable that marriage equality will ever again retreat to the fringe. His willingness to embrace it in the midst of an election year signals a belief that the American public is ready to accept this position as perfectly mainstream, even if they disagree with it. It will undoubtedly enable – or pressure – other world leaders to support the same view.
Meanwhile on the Republican side of the country, presumptive U.S. presidential candidate Mitch Romney, who has denounced Obama’s support for same-sex marriage, apparently assaulted a gay student while he was in college:
“He can’t look like that. That’s wrong. Just look at him!” an incensed Romney told Matthew Friedemann, his close friend in the Stevens Hall dorm, according to Friedemann’s recollection. Mitt, the teenaged son of Michigan Gov. George Romney, kept complaining about Lauber’s look, Friedemann recalled. A few days later, Friedemann entered Stevens Hall off the school’s collegiate quad to find Romney marching out of his own room ahead of a prep school posse shouting about their plan to cut Lauber’s hair. Friedemann followed them to a nearby room where they came upon Lauber, tackled him and pinned him to the ground. As Lauber, his eyes filling with tears, screamed for help, Romney repeatedly clipped his hair with a pair of scissors.
Not making this up. This is in the Washington Post, not some fringey conspiracy website. Yikes. America has problems.
