President Barack Obama opened his second inaugural address by quoting the statement from the preamble to the Declaration of Independence that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights."
He then went on to say that if men were in fact created equal, then homosexual “love” must be equal as well.
“What makes us exceptional, what makes us American," said Obama, “is our allegiance to an idea articulated in a declaration made more than two centuries ago: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’"
“Today we continue a never-ending journey to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time,” said Obama. “For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they’ve never been self-executing; that while freedom is a gift from God, it must be secured by His people here on Earth.”
A bit later in his speech, Obama returned to the theme of God creating all men equal, and this time tied it directly to his belief that the “law” should extend equal treatment to “the love” of homosexuals.
“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law, for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well,” said Obama.
Obama has endorsed same-sex marriage. "I've just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married," Obama told ABC News in May.
Both the Old and New Testaments condemn homosexual behavior, and, in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus Christ affirms the definition of marriage first presented in the book of Genesis as the union of a man and a woman.
“Some Pharisees came to Jesus testing Him and asking, ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason at all?” says the Gospel. “And He answered and said, ‘Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but on flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.”
During the 2008 presidential campaign, Newsweek reported, based on an interview with Obama, that he grew up “without any particular religion” and was baptized at the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago sometime in the early 1990s.
“Obama's religious biography is unconventional and politically problematic,”Newsweek said. “Born to a Christian-turned-secular mother and a Muslim-turned-atheist African father, Obama grew up living all across the world with plenty of spiritual influences, but without any particular religion. He is now a Christian, having been baptized in the early 1990s at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago.”
CNS
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