Presidential Support for Gay Marriage: Ending "Moral Divide" in the US as Necessity for Effective Liberal Interventionism Abroad

Perhaps in no democracies in the traditionally labelled liberal, developed West is there such a huge schism in social issues as people see in the United States of America.  Even in local city elections of supposed "progressive" urban parts of California, there are plenty of incidents where right-wing candidates passionately declare their intentions to "boldly stand up for Christ" if elected.  While plenty of atheists with a "live and let live" attitude toward individual behaviors exist, equal numbers among the citizenry feels the urgent need to halt America's "moral decline."

While what that really means is up to individual interpretation, but it is clear that the population of the US is not even near being on the same page with regard to "moral standings" if people running for public office find incentive to appeal for votes in such a sanctimonious and doctrinaire fashion.  It is against such a background that a trend for high-level politicians (from the Democratic Party) to make public declarations regarding their stances on gay marriage is now making waves across the nation.  The Obama-Biden-Clinton statements supporting gay marriages have been seen a political "evolution."

Equally newsworthy has been the open North Carolinian defiance to the trend, declaring the public pressure from a statement-making Oval Office straightforward "tyranny of the majority," in a manner quite reminiscent of how state's rights was treated around the year 1850, in the dawn of the Civil War.  Not suggesting militant confrontation over the issue, but clearly not everyone in the small circle of well-connected political elites were in tune (and in fact, on the contrary, quite shocked) by the incredibly sudden presidential declaration.

The fact that the supposed military and political leader of the liberal, developed West cannot get a politically unified stance on an issue like gay marriage that pretty much tests the socially liberal nature of the very nation sends the wrong message to the rest of the world.  As Bush said in so many speeches in so many different occasions: America is supposed to represent freedom, not just political freedom of being able to vote for one's president, but vastly more important, the basic human rights of not facing persecution for being a disliked minority.

So when the peoples of distant lands so affected by America's political and military interventionism sparked by those positively stated liberal ideas and look toward today's America as that shining bacon of equality, tolerance, and freedom, they are bound to be disappointed.  Plenty of intolerance exist openly, caused by race, religion, or just upbringing.  And they continue to exist because of political quibbling up in the top of the hierarchy, giving no chance for anyone to rein in those acts of intolerance.  People would simply laugh off those idealistic utterances.

Perceiving that dark reality of a morally divided America, any observer can only think of American attempts to portray itself as a leader of the liberal West a matter of hypocritical vanity.  America certainly cannot hope to effectively compel others to respect human rights when it itself cannot even get all its citizens to agree on implementing social liberalism.  What it does abroad can only be said naked self-interest, in the guise of so-called higher moral values that it does not even completely believe in itself.  Internal moral disputes is thus weakening images of American moral value abroad.

Unfortunately, the US, among all Western nations, have the greatest strength (measured in both militaristic power projection and soft power such as Hollywood, so far only used to blatantly polish the perfect image of America in third world countries) and greatest inclination to push its "liberal" values upon non-Western countries.  In this perspective, it is not replaceable by any other Western nation (including those with much more progressive policies and perfect human rights in accordance with true social liberalism).

Therefore, the only way for those liberal Western values, including tolerance for gay marriages, to take hold in the non-Western world, in many of which the very mentioning of homosexuals in existence is a social taboo and punishable taboo, is for the US to get its act together itself.  For it to preach to others "universal values" such as tolerance of different religions, minorities, and sexuality, it must first make sure that all of its own citizens genuinely accept those values.  Without internal unity within America, we can see no hope of those values blossoming in still-hostile foreign lands.