You can't really forbid discussion on one of the more hotly debated issues of the guy's presidency just because you don't like it. This is a huge issue for people, yourself included obviously, and regardless of how uncomfortable it makes people a solution that everyone can live with has to be reached. If debating on the internet helps people decide what they can and can't live with in time to hit the polls then that's nothing but a good thing.

Arq, I am not forbidding discussion because I don't like it. In fact, please tell me where I used the word "forbid". I'll wait.
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Find it yet? Right.

I am asking that this thread does not devolve into a "this is how marriage is defined" thread. We really try, at Goth.Net, to prevent too much thread drift when possible. Especially in Politics where the discussions are a bit more serious.

I'm suggesting that it goes well beyond the scope of just Barack Obama's presidency in terms of honing in on one issue, one that isn't tied to one president/prime minister/queen/head honcho. In fact, I've seen tv ads online recently that remind us it's not strictly a US issue.

I've seen (and other staffers here have as well) this sort of topic explode in the past and completely obscure the original intent of a thread. Call it experience, if you will. So why shouldn't I say "let's not start getting into the definitions of marriage in this thread" in a thread about the Obama presidency? If you want to discuss the definition of marriage, in greater detail, then make it a separate thread.

Perhaps, then, my mistake was not explaining in greater detail, that I would love to start asking questions about certain positions on that topic, in light of my own feelings on it, but also knew that in so doing, I would myself be taking the thread in an off-topic direction. Does that help?

Yup, that's fine. I just attribute more weight to your suggestions than I would towards others because of your position. Objection withdrawn.

Sadly I've never seen that ad. Show's we've got a long way to go yet here.

Luna, that video brought me to tears.

A brilliant ad!

I am not an Obama supporter, but I do greatly respect the man. And yes, he has been in office for too short a time to have his actions judged, but he has been a politician long enough for his ideas to be judged. He does seem to be a believer in economic controls, though not quite a socialist. But it's him and the rest of the crowd, so that isn't much of a mark on his name. I would like to hope, for the sake of the legitimacy of the Nobel Peace Prize, that between now and the end of his term Obama does indeed make some sort of great change. I doubt I'll view it as positive, but the majority voted him in, so I suppose the majority will have recieved what they asked for.