Opinion: On gay marriage, Latinos agree with Obama
Editor's note: Maria Cardona is a Democratic strategist, a principal at the Dewey Square Group, a former senior adviser to Hillary Clinton and former communications director for the Democratic National Committee.
By Maria Cardona, CNN Contributor
(CNN) - President Obama is indeed a profile in courage. He has made history yet again with his announcement that he supports full marriage equality for gay and lesbian Americans. Bravo, Mr. President.
Now comes all the warnings and predictions of what this will mean for the election in November. One of those dire warnings is that this will hurt him with his supporters among Latino communities. This will not be the case and here's why:
For so long, Republicans have loved to push the meme, famously touted by Ronald Reagan, that Latinos are, by their nature, more conservative on religious and social issues and therefore will be open to the Republican point of view.
While it is true that Latinos are more conservative on these issues - Republicans love to use gay marriage and abortion as the key examples - they historically do not base their vote on these issues. That is why no GOP presidential candidate in history has ever been able to attract a majority of Latino voters.
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Does gay marriage affect my health and safety ? No. Does gay marriage affect my income or taxes ? No. While I may not personally like gay marriage, I don't see how it has a negative effect on my living in America. Politicians who pay attention to gay marriage might be unable to pay attention to really important things, like restoring the middle class and work to restore a level playing field for all our citizens.
being gay is a chemical off balance in the brain and can be fixed in the same manner adhd is fixed.
Umm...pretty sure the outcome of Prop 8 in California tells a different story. I'm pro marriage equality but why did CNN run a Democrat e-mail length PR piece as even an editorial?
Why is it that every media hack, politician, Madison Avenue jerk and their dogs try to pigeonhole us Hispanics, trying to indenture us as a lump group in their petty quests for job security??? We have at different turns been stereotyped, misrepresented, told what to do and in other ways intruded upon, and we're sick of it, haven't you "real Americans" anything better to do, anybody else to annoy and try to exploit? Hispanics come from different walks of life and have different mindsets, just like Europeans and Asians do, and practically all of us who are bilingual and willing to speak out are either born or naturalized citizens, so LAY OFF. Furthermore, you don't realize how socially handicapped and avoidable you seem to us when you try to lump us all into your convenient little models.