Our national unemployment rate is 7.8 percent, whereas the estimated number of homosexual men and women in the U.S. is 4 percent.
With all of the controversy and passion that a smoke-screen issue such as gay marriage can stir up, we often forget just how much of the population will even be affected — if at all — with any sort of federal gay marriage initiative.
This being said, doesn't it strike you as somewhat odd that many young people ever-so-passionately elect politicians and campaign for an issue that isn't a federal issue, affects a mere 4 percent of the population and doesn't even address anything of dire national value for this country?
Playing right into his party's base, President Barack Obama made a “monumental decision” regarding his administration's stance on gay marriage.
It's a decision that will help “define his second term,” according to CNN.
It's a decision to ideologically trample the rights of states and lecture the Supreme Court over the size and scope of its growing power.
It's the kind of “monumental decision” that just makes me want to buy a megaphone, round up a crowd of college kids, and gently — or as best as I can — explain to them that their future prosperity doesn't depend on gay marriage, but upon the free-market and whether or not there are jobs out there for them when they graduate.
Sure, Obama's beliefs about gay marriage are “constantly evolving.”
But let's not forget that Obama explicitly stated in 2006 that “decisions about marriage should be left to the states as they always have been.”
Flip-flopping politicians aside, the importance of Obama's decision is nothing more than an illusion.
Does he genuinely believe that gay marriage is more important to the future of this country than whether or not hard-working citizens can find work?
While President Obama may be the Democratic party's scapegoat for issue and value mismanagement, the Republicans — with their Defense of Marriage Act — are just as much to blame for growing the size of the federal government at their constituent's expense.
Marriage is not a federal question. Obama was 100 percent correct back in 2006 when he originally made that comment. It just simply isn't the business of the federal government.
A bigger federal question would be the nearly $16.6 trillion of debt our politicians are unjustly forcing upon us. How about the rising inflation rates?
How about federal issues that aren't about the economy? How about issues that the Constitution actually requires of our federal government, issues such as national defense?
This fallacious aura of civil rights for gays and lesbians is a complex phenomena. While ultimately, the gay marriage situation does need to be addressed, it should not be the reason we elect federal politicians and it should not be federally addressed in place of a plethora of other issues that are plaguing this country in much more harmful ways.
When the value of the U.S. dollar is worthless, no one will care who marries who and no one will care about sexual orientation.
They'll care about re-establishing social order.
Reach this columnist at spmccaul@asu.edu or follow him on twitter at @sean_mccauley
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