It's bedroom vs. boardroom in America

President Obama's declaration supporting same-sex marriage is huge for reasons besides the obvious one -- that two people in a committed relationship should have the right to marry each other, any two people as long as they're of legal age.

By speaking out, the president is not saying what he'd do if the issue turned personal for him -- say, if one of his daughters announced that she wanted to wed her lesbian lover in Obama's church, the United Church of Christ, which declared its support for gay marriage back in 2005. He's saying that sex between consenting adults is a private matter.

Obama is a private man who holds his cards close. The decision to come out of the closet on same-sex marriage was, like most others he makes, based on a political calculus. I'm sure he wishes he didn't have to make it, because he knows what he's up against: the unholy alliance that is the Republican Party.

Mitt Romney is just as opportunistic as Obama, if not more. He knows that just as Obama won't risk alienating his base by pandering to a few fringe independents who might be homophobic, the Republican candidate can't win in 2012 without support of both his own natural constituency -- big business -- and the gay-bashing religious right.

Liberal economist Robert Reich thinks the spate of gay-marriage related repeals and renewals are a cynical ploy to distract the Santorum crowd from the real issue facing the country: consolidation of corporate power at the expense of democracy.

It's why, he writes, "Minnesota voters will be considering a similar amendment in November [and] Republicans in Maryland and Washington State are seeking to overturn legislative approval of same-sex marriage there."

And why "Republicans have introduced over four hundred bills in state legislatures aimed at limiting women's reproductive rights-banning abortions, requiring women seeking abortions to have invasive ultra-sound tests beforehand, and limiting the use of contraceptives.

Yet election-year fulminating against gay marriage (and women's rights) obscures how dramatically things have improved for gays "on the ground" in America just in the 16 years since President Bill Clinton allowed himself to be coerced into signing the Defense of Marriage Act.

No public school is without its GLBT group or Gay-Straight Alliance. Technology, too, has helped acceptance of gays, by showing the straight world what's actually "natural" and what is not.

Gay-marriage opponents think marriage is for making and raising babies, period. If only a man and a woman can make a baby, then only a man and a woman can marry, they argue. This raises two questions:

1) Should couples have to submit to fertility tests before being granted a marriage license, just to ensure that reproduction will occur? 2) Do test-tube babies count, and, if so, how are they any different if they're born to gay couples rather than to heterosexuals?

Such questions don't come up in mainstream-media discussions about gay marriage. What comes up is God. The Rev. Billy Graham took out full-page ads in 14 North Carolina newspapers reminding the Christian faithful that "The Bible is clear -- God's definition of marriage is between a man and a woman."

Last I heard, God had not been named Supreme Ruler of America. We still have a president and two houses of Congress reporting to the people. The people were a diverse group in 1776, and they still are.

Among Americans today are Taoists, Methodists, atheists and devil worshippers. This diversity of opinion regarding religion has always existed in the United States.

It's a primary reason why the U.S. exists itself. Freedom of religion for many who came here meant freedom from religion.

As a result, religions in America could promulgate any rules they liked and impose them on anyone who voluntarily signed on to the program. But the rules of one or another religion had no application whatsoever to those who did not sign up.

Sometimes I'm tempted to go into the religion business myself. My flock would worship all living things with equal fervor.

Obama's announcement spares me the trouble. I can leave defending gay marriage up to him and his vice president.

Joe Biden, whose comments in support of gay marriage allegedly inspired his boss to accelerate the evolution of his own thinking, had a lot more to lose by opening his mouth than the president did. Biden has to answer to the Catholic Church.

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