Pres. Obama: Defending traditional marriage is “a bad idea”

From the CNN blog, which follows “The View” more closely than I do:

Less than a week after President Barack Obama made history by endorsing same-sex marriage, the president would not commit to fighting to have the Defense of Marriage Act, commonly known as DOMA, be repealed.  In an interview on ABC’s “The View” Mr. Obama reiterated his administration’s decision to stop defending the law in the courts.  “My justice department has said to the courts we don’t think the defense of marriage act is constitutional this is something that historically had been determined at the state level, and part of my believing ultimately that civil unions weren’t sufficient.”  But pressed further if he would fight to repeal DOMA, Mr. Obama would only say, “Congress is clearly on notice that I think it’s a bad idea.”

However, while the President continues his attack on traditional marriage—also known as marriage, period—many journalists are fixated on stories of alleged high school bullying by Mitt Romney. Well, I suppose that since Sen. Obama was vetted and scrutinized so thoroughly, it’s only fair that Romney undergo the same rite of passage.

Anyhow, one of Obama’s arguments is that the expansion of “rights” is a win-win situation for everyone, as FOX News reports:

While his administration has put out statements on the idea of repealing the 1996 federal law defining marriage as between a man and a woman, it’s unusual for Obama to call for its repeal.

He did so Monday as one of a list of policy goals for what he hopes will be a second term, along with passing the immigration legislation known as the Dream Act, reforming Wall Street and investing in schools.

“We have never gone wrong when we expanded rights and responsibilities to everybody,” Obama said. “That doesn’t weaken families, that strengthens families.”

Unless, of course, the expansion of rights involves making certain that every insurance provider in the country provide contraceptives, abortifacients, and other medical procedures that are contrary to the beliefs of Catholics and others. But who’s keeping track of such trifling matters?

The simple fact is that a continual and often ill-conceived expansion of rights logically affects the rights of others, sometimes obviously and sometimes not so obviously. This is not, of course, to say that expanding rights is always bad, because that’s not the case at all. But Obama is going to be hardpressed to explain how the expansion of this right—what is really the attempted redefinition of marriage by the federal government, in the long run—will strengthen families. That is especially the case when you examine the horrible effects that the right to contraceptives (1965), the right to abortion (1972), and right to no fault divorces (1970s and onward) have had on marriage, familes, and especially women and children.