Documents revealed on the Windy City Times suggest that Barack Obama supported same-sex marriage in 1996, indicating that the president-elect made a more conservative shift before running for president.

"I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages," he said in a questionnaire the same year he was elected to the Illinois Senate.

Obama now favors civil unions and opposes a federal same-sex marriage ban, but he opposes same-sex marriage.

Fifty-five percent of Americans oppose gay marriage, with 36 percent favoring it, according to an August 2007 survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life and the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

(h/t Ben Smith, Politico)

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at January 13, 2009 | Comments (3)

Most people remember Kenneth Starr from his days as the special investigator of Whitewater and President Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky. But for the last few years he has served as dean of the law school at Pepperdine University, which is affiliated with a conservative Christian denomination that I grew up in.

After rumors circulated last month, Starr was named today the lead counsel for the chief proponents of Proposition 8, the constitutional amendment, passed last month by 52 percent of Californians, that would limit marriage to unions between a man and a woman. Legal challenges have been filed, and proponents are preparing for a battle.

“We are confident that the will of the voters and Proposition 8 will ultimately be upheld,“ said Andrew Pugno, General Counsel for ProtectMarriage.com and the Proposition 8 Legal Defense Fund. “The addition of Dean Starr to this legal conversation will provide useful guidance for the Court in resolving these important issues.“

Starr, like me, grew up in the Church of Christ (not to be confused with the United Church of Christ, which resides on the other end of the theological spectrum). I’m curious as to how his faith shapes his practice of law. I couldn’t find much online. The best window I got into Starr’s Christian worldview comes from a comment he made during his speech at Christian Business Men’s Committee in Washington. It appeared in a 1998 Washington Times article, no longer online:

“When you think of the blessed life that Jesus led on earth, think of his time utilization,“ Mr. Starr said. “He didn’t waste a lot of time. Three years, that’s the length of time . . . that this individual, human yet God, ended up shaping not just history, but each person who will say, ‘I want to come to know Christ.‘ “

(Originally published at The God Blog.)

Posted by Sarah Pulliam at December 22, 2008 | Comments (4)