Obama's position on culture war priority of same sex marriage has always been somewhat of a tightrope, and it's getting some attention now that California will have a voter proposition that may overturn the recent California Supreme Court ruling that same sex marriage is legal.

Here's the usual statement:

"However, I do not support gay marriage," he said in the questionnaire. "Marriage has religious and social connotations, and I consider marriage to be between a man and a woman. If I was President, however, I would oppose any effort to stifle a state's ability to decide this question on its own."

But here's a recent statement on California's proposition 8

...the presumptive presidential nominee said he opposed "the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution" and similar efforts in other states.

That's settled, we now know that when Obama said he supports the states ability to decide this question, what he really means is that he supports the ability of the states judges to decide the issue. And that once decided in that manner, all debate must apparently cease.

Which prompted a scathing editorial in the IBD:

So the Clintons proclaim and demonstrate their love, convincingly: "No one understands me better and no one can make me laugh the way Bill does," she wrote in her 2003 memoir. "He's so romantic!" she coos to Essence. He kisses her on the forehead. They hug. I totally buy it. And then, like clockwork, he screws her over. Most recently, he says the thing about Jesse Jackson that turns off who knows how many supporters. She seethes, re-asserts her independence. They make up. Rinse and repeat.

Classical Values has a broad and thoughtful post on an issue of church-state relations which is beginning to stir some controversy.

A Pennsylvania judge "invalidated a 10-month marriage, finding that a friend of the bride's who officiated at the wedding didn't have the power to do so under Pennsylvania law even though he had been ordained online by the Universal Life Church. The judge ruled the friend didn't qualify as a minister under state law because he had no regular congregation or place of worship." Further, state lawmakers are sponsoring laws to invalidate weddings performed by officiants ordained "by mail order or via the Internet or any other electronic means."

The state has thus determined that a "regular congregation or place of worship" is a legal requirement for ordination to the clergy, and that mail or on-line methods of ministerial preparation are legally insufficient. I might share the lawmakers' sarcastic mirth at the legitimacy of on-line preachers, or sympathize with a judge's indignancy at the unceremonious flippancy of marriages performed by such potential charlatans. But I see no humor in an assertion that the state may regulate (read: control) the standards for priestly ordination!

Wasn't this very pretension the thrust of King Henry VIII's quibble with Rome half a millennium ago?