The Presidential election season is upon us and things are going to start to get nasty. Now that we know, for sure, who the two candidates are going to be, they will start to solidify their beliefs and try to demonize the other guy. Last week, President Barack Obama came out in support of gay marriage. While this was a flip flop from his previous stance, it pretty much reflects the party line. But he may have hurt himself more than helping himself in this instance. After the announcement of his support, there has been some complaints from his urban base. Here is a recording of a morning radio show on hip hop station Hot 97 in New York City:

As you can see from this selectively edited video, people who listen to this station are angry. Some don’t think that it is right for gay people to get married, some do not agree with gay people at all. It was summed up perfectly when the hosts asked a caller identified as Anthony: “Anthony, how do you feel about Obama? You’re not feeling him, huh?” Anthony’s response is what many African Americans seem in general to feel, and while the overall support numbers for minorities and gay marriage are gaining, they are still mainly against it. He said “No, because I’m totally against that same-sex marriage, man. I’m 27, I grew up in the days where a female’s supposed to marry a female, I mean a male supposed to marry a female.”

Proposition 8 was on the ballot in California in 2008. It was a measure that, as described in Wikipedia, would add a new provision, Section 7.5 of the Declaration of Rights, to the California Constitution, which provides that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” While it passed by a slim margin of 52.24% who voted yes to 47.76% who voted no, the biggest eye opener for the Democratic party and liberals in general is that 70% of African Americans voted yes on prop 8.

So it seems as though Obama has a bigger hole to pull himself out of now, because a New York Times/CBS News poll found Sixty-seven percent said they thought Obama’s announcement was made “mostly for political reasons,” while 24 percent said it was “mostly because he thinks it is right.” Also found in the poll was that 70 percent of Independents attribute the president’s move to politics, along with nearly half of Democrats. A caller on Hot 97 had pretty much the same sentiment saying: “I’m not going to vote for Obama because I feel like… he knew he was losing votes and he needed to get people’s attention. And that’s what he did. Why did he want to do this now?””