Before you get worked up about this, and I’m not saying that you shouldn’t, it’s important to identify exactly what has changed so that you don’t end up fighting the wrong battles.

First of all, the decision only applies to Section 3 of DOMA, which is the part that establishes a federal definition of marriage that overrides individual state definitions as far as national government policy and laws are concerned.  It does not apply to Section 2 which exempts states from having to recognize any same-sex marriages enacted by other states.  The DOJ will continue to defend the constitutionality of Section 2.

Secondly, the decision means that the DoJ will no longer defend the constitutionality of Section 3 in court but the Obama administration is still constitutionally obligated to continue enforcing the law (including Section 3) until it is either declared unconstitutional in court or Congress repeals it, and there is no indication that they wont continue to do so.

Third, while it does deviate from a long-standing tradition in which the DoJ defends the constitutionality of laws properly enacted until they are declared unconstitutional by the judicial branch, there is nothing directly unconstitutional about President Obama’s decision. He is breaking with tradition, but not violating the constitution.

Finally, there may have been some people who voted for Obama partially because they were under the impression that he was against same-sex marriage who now feel like Obama has changed positions.  But he hasn’t changed positions.  Even while campaigning for the presidency, Obama was the most pro-same-sex-marriage candidate ever from either of the two major parties. Throughout his campaign Obama gave different groups of potential voters different impressions of his position on same-sex marriage and let them believe he was saying what they wanted him to be saying.  Personally, he believes that marriage is between a man and a woman.  But he has always explicitly said that he intended to work for the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act and that he opposed Proposition 8 in California.  I wrote about this during his campaign (See: LDS Church vs Barack Obama on Same-Sex Marriage, Neglected VP Debate Issue: Obama’s Same-Sex Marriage Policy ).  So if you thought that you were voting for someone who was going to defend traditional marriage, you weren’t paying close enough attention.  But don’t blame yourself too much, Obama wanted you to come away with that impression. Be more careful in the future.

Anyhow, armed with proper information, you can now get outraged and go out and do what you can to oppose Obama’s efforts to undermine and eventually repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.

Barack Obama has attempted to targeted this impulse for positive change with his rhetoric of “hope.” I have a number of friends and family members for whom this message is reasonably attractive. Obama has painted himself as a proponent of “new politics,” rising above the partisanship of the past.

I firmly believe, however, that this post-partisan visage is demonstrably a hypocritical mask, calculated to play upon the righteous sentiments of the people in a way to win votes, but offered completely insincerely. The mainstream media have been complicit in perpetuating this lie.

As part of this false post-partisan persona, Barack Obama has tried to paint his primary opponent as merely a continuation of the Bush administration, pointing out that John McCain has voted in-line with the Republican Party 95% of the time. But, according to non-partisan sources, Barack Obama has voted in line with his party 96% of the time (see this analysis from FactCheck.org)

For me, this fact is central to the presidential decision. While the slogan of voting for the man, not the party is a noble idea, it is ultimately a naive one. The reality is that, because of the way national politics works, when you vote for a man you are also voting for the party to which he is inextricably bound. Regardless of his post-partisan mantra, Obama has voted 96% of the time with his party. He has never taken a strong, public stand against his own party on any meaningful issue. He is a democratic partisan through and through. To believe otherwise is gullible in the extreme.

Obama’s partisanship is revealed in his scant record:

1. Barack Obama wants to recind the Defense of Marriage Act, which is what prevents states from being forced to recognize same-sex marriages enacted in other states. His position on same-sex marriage has been purposefully obscured to attract supporters from both sides.

2. Obama repeatedly voted against laws designed to protect babies born in botched late-term, partial birth abortions from being killed or left to die because the laws might be used to restrict other kinds of abortions. Truly disgusting.

3. Obama is a ruthless partisan who won his seat in the Illinois senate by hiring a team of lawyers to crawl through the paperwork of his opponents and get every one of them thrown off the ballot on technicalities , so that he was the only choice. Is this a “new kind of politics?”

4. Obama has had long standing relationships with radical progressives and has systematically tried to white-wash his past to make himself more palatable to Americans, only distancing himself as it became prudent to win the election.

5. Obama purposefully obscures his socialist tax-credit system by falsely describing them as “tax-cuts.” The top 25% richest Americans already pay 83.88% of all the taxes. The lower 50% only pay 3%. That’s an even more progressive, socialist tax system than many European nations. And Obama wants to be even more socialist than that . We need less socialism, not more.

6. Obama has tried to blame the Bush Administration for the economic collapse caused by the housing and credit crisis. While it is true that Republicans repealed laws set up after the great depression to protect the country from another banking disaster, that repeal happened back in the late 90s’ and was signed into law by President Clinton. The problem was then exacerbated by affirmative-action style mortgage lending policies promoted by the Democrats . When the Republican’s proposed stronger controls on the industry to prevent the crisis, the Democrats blocked them. Worst of all, in only 4 years in the Senate, Barack Obama accepted more money from corrupt Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac than all but one other senator had in the last 20 years. See also: Planting Seeds of Disaster

7. Obama’s defeatism and opposition to the Surge in Iraq, which was not only an increase in troops, but a radical change in strategy, is unacceptable. Losing the war in Iraq is not an option. Retreating would have emboldened our enemies and lead to increased terrorist conflict. Contrary to Obama’s statements, the Surge has worked. Obama has no foreign policy experience and it shows. Even the President of France described his approach to foreign affairs as utterly immature . What do you do when you don’t have experience? You fall back on the party line, and that is what we can expect from Obama.

8. Obama has purposefully turned off security protections on his website donation pages so that he can accept illegal contributions from foreigners, people posting under fake names, and people using untraceable gift cards. This is a calculated move that some people estimate may account for close to 181 million dollars of his record breaking donations. This is down and dirty politics, not hope and change.

While it is true that the Bush Administration has an abysmal approval record, the current congress has been controlled mostly by democrats for the last two years, and in that time the approval rating of the congress has plummeted to the lowest in history.

And then there is the important concern for the Supreme Court. Four or eight years of Obama would be nothing, really, compared to the next 50 years of whatever liberal Supreme Court Justices he is sure to appoint. I have had enough of the “living-constitution” approach to the constitution, and while I am well aware of the problems with originalism, I want more conservative judicial review. (My favorite Justice is Clarance Thomas).

So, if what you are looking for is a post-partisan, moderate outsider, 96%-Democrat Obama is an ignis fatuus, a will-o’-the-whisp that will dazzle you as you follow him through the darkness, down unfamiliar paths to the edge of a partisan precipice where the illusion will vanish.

I cannot endorse such two-facedness. And while I empathize with the democratic impulse toward helping the poor and needy, and protecting the weak from calculating, predatory businesses , as a conservative I cannot support methods that the democratic party advocates to address these issues, nor can I support the the pro-abortion, pro-same-sex-marriage, anti-religious, big-government, socialist, fascist tendencies of the progressive movement.

I recommend that you vote against Barack Obama for president.

For more, check out this Comprehensive Argument Against Barack Obama .

But who do I endorse?

That is a harder question. There are many things I dislike about John McCain. And the Republicans in general appear in many instances to have abandoned principles for power. Personally, the things on which I have disagreed with the Bush administration have been in those matters when they have acted more like Big Government Democrats instead of Limited-Government Conservatives.

LDS Author, Orson Scott Card makes a pretty good case for voting for McCain and against Obama. Card is a conservative-leaning democrat.

To a certain extent, a quote from Tolkien’s the Lord of the Rings communicates my feelings on this decision. When the hobbits meet Aragorn, he seems an unruly, disagreeable type. When Merry asks why they should trust him, Frodo responds “I think a servant of the Enemy would look fairer, and feel fouler.”

There are many aspects of John McCain that look foul.

I voted against McCain not only in this election’s primaries, but also back in 2000. He has never been an appealing candidate for me. I dislike a number of his positions as well as parts of his personality and personal life.

But even though I disagree with him, I do believe that he is sincere in doing what he believes is right. I don’t believe he is fake. He is certainly a politician and plays the game. He can be temperamental and even downright nasty. But he does have a real record of bi-partisanship, and that says something. I think he knows that his party has been a poor steward and that he is sincere about trying to do things differently. I think he is what he says he is, even if I don’t like everything about what he is.

McCain looks foul and feels fair to me—well, at least fairer to me. Obama, on the other hand looks fair and feels foul.

So, I reluctantly endorse John McCain for president.

However, for those friends who cannot bring themselves to vote for McCain, either because they refuse to vote for a Republican this year out of protest, because of his policies and record, or because of his personal life, I recommend that you vote for a third party candidate that best matches the principles you believe in:

Consider:

Chuck Baldwin for the Constitution Party
Bob Barr for the Libertarian Party

Or write in Mitt Romney. Seriously.

But don’t vote for Obama. What you see is not what you will get.

I plan a post in the near future to enumerate the reasons why I think that voting for Barack Obama is a mistake, but in this post I want to focus on Barack Obama’s Socialist Policies and political outlook. For those of you who view the state enforced redistribution of wealth as a positive, good thing, then Obama is your man and this post isn’t going to convince you otherwise, so simply skip down to watch the embedded video I think best represents Obama.

For those of you who are considering voting for Obama, but are not comfortable with the morality and the implications of forced socialism, read on.

Obviously, the United States has already become, in many ways, a socialist state. Wealth is forcefully collected and doled out in all kinds of ways. Those of us who don’t believe it is moral to forcefully take money from one and give it to another, that question the incentives or lack of incentives socialism creates, and who worry about the degree of governmental power required to do so (power that once acquired may be directed toward less beneficial ends), are already concerned about the current socialism in our system.

At least some of the anger directed at the Republican Party by those who have in the past supported it is because the Republicans have been acting more like Big Government Democrats than conservatives, and because George W. Bush’s “Compassionate Conservatism” ended up being pretty similar to Democratic Socialism.

But if that is the reason for the anger, then voting for more and greater socialism is not the answer. The idea that you are “teaching the Republicans a lesson” by voting for Barack Obama is ridiculous. If you are trying to send a message to the Republican Party that you dislike how they have governed, then voting for Barack Obama sends the wrong message. If you are determined to send a conservative message, then vote for the Libertarian candidate, or the Constitution Party candidate.

Is Barack Obama a socialist? Recently conservative bloggers have focused on the following exchange between Mr. Obama and a Plumber on the campaign trail:

Plumber to Obama: “Your new tax plan is going to tax me more. Isn’t it?”
.
Obama: “It’s not that I want to punish your success, I just want to make sure that everybody that is behind you, that they have a chance for success too. I think that when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”

“Spreading the wealth,” sure sounds like socialism to me if it means that it is going to be enforced by the government.

And how does Mr. Obama plan to “spread the wealth” around? Through the forced redistribution of wealth via what he calls “tax credits.” When Obama talks about “Tax Cuts” on 95% of working families, he is not talking about real cuts on the percentage of money being collected as income tax. It is a little word game. Instead, he is proposing “tax credits” which he presents as equal to tax cuts.

The difference is that “tax cuts” decrease the amount of money the government is actually collecting. “Tax Credits” on the other hand mean that the government continues to collect the same amount or more in tax, but then credits money back to individuals that meet certain requirements. So how is that different? Tax cuts lower the tax burden on those who pay taxes. But with Tax Credits, everyone who qualifies for the credit gets money distributed from the IRS, even if they paid no income tax.

Estimates are that under Obama’s tax plan, over 40% of all those who file with the IRS would pay zero taxes, but most of those would still receive and cash a Tax Credit check from the IRS. This already happens with the Child Tax Credit, but Obama is planning on adding a lot more credits.

For a more extensive analysis, see this article in the Wall Street Journal: Obama’s 95% Illusion

So, what Obama is calling “Tax Cuts” are what conservatives have traditionally called “Welfare” or “the Government Dole.”

Tax the wealthy and distribute it to the less wealthy. Rob the rich to feed the poor. Barack Obama is a modern day Socialist Robin Hood. Except that by using government power to do it, he is using the Sheriff of Nottingham’s abuse of government power to achieve Robin Hood’s aims. You can’t be Robin Hood and the Sheriff at the same time, unless you are talking about Socialism with a capital S.

For those who espouse conservative ideas of what constitutes the proper role government, Barack Obama’s socialism should make him anathema as an option for our vote.

Some have said they will vote for Obama because of his first-class temperament . But Socialism with a Smile doesn’t make it any more acceptable.

One of the most memorable depictions of the kind of socialism I see promoted by Barack Obama is the following scene from one of my favorite movies of all time, Time Bandits. In the clip, the bandits, having just looted Napoleon Bonaparte, find themselves in the middle ages, and meet Robin Hood and his “Merry Men”—who aren’t so merry after all, but vicious thugs. Robin takes their ill-gotten gain and redistributes it to the poor, who in addition to getting a dole, also each get a punch in the face by one of the Merry Men.

A brilliant vignette and a long time favorite of mine, the clip seems to represent Obama pretty well: the friendly, smiling socialist, surrounded by unsavory associates (Ayers, Wright, Rezko, etc.) who is happy to take money from other robbers (fanny, freddie, etc.), and then later call them “awful people”, and whose socialist policies seem benevolent, but end up requiring a punch in the face, as socialism usually does in one way or another.

[ Watch the clip ]

“Jolly Good!”

In an interesting contrast, the presumptive Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States, Barack Obama, has issued a letter of his own addressed to the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club which was read at the group’s annual Pride Breakfast. In the letter, not only does he express strong opposition to the California amendment, but he goes even further and advocates “repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy.”

The Defense of Marriage Act is the law that protects states that do not allow same-sex marriage from having to recognize such marriages enacted in other states that do. So essentially, Barack Obama is saying that not only does he oppose efforts to amend the California constitution to ban same-sex marriage, he also wants to ensure that all other states recognize those marriages.

This position makes him the most pro-same-sex-marriage candidate ever. Last election’s democratic nominee, John Kerry, like his predecessors, while in favor of homosexual rights, was opposed to same-sex marriage. Al Gore, when running in 2000, said that he opposed “changing the institution of marriage as it is presently understood—between a man and a woman.” Gore has since changed his position.

This puts LDS members who support Barack Obama in an uncomfortable position. A vote for Obama, despite whatever other merits he may have in other realms of policy, may not be easily reconcilable with the Church’s exhortation to “do all you can” to pass the California marriage amendment. Some fringe members who support gay marriage have said that “all they can do” is stay silent. But refraining from publicly advocating against the amendment is nullified by both a negative vote on proposed amendment as well as a vote for Barack Obama.

The ballot is ultimately the most important form of speech in political matters.

UPDATE:
I realize that many of the commentators here came via a link from another blog with which I have a long history of strong disagreement and even antipathy, despite the fact that I have a number of friends who are bloggers there.

The link from that blog was made with the title “A vote for Obama is a vote against God.” This unfortunate, hyperbolic caricature of my thoughts unfairly predisposed readers to read a sentiment into my words that is not there. More clarification in the comments.

UPDATE 2:
I have been delisted from ldsblogs.org as a result of the conversations around this post.

UPDATE 3: This post contributed, in a round about way to this