If marriage is a civil right, how can our President leave it to the individual states?

[Zorra]

29. Thanks. Yes, there is, however

it is after the homophobic bigot states rebel, and refuse to recognize LGBT rights after they are ordered to do so, that Obama gets to do the Abe Lincoln thing. Sometimes your so-called "military dictatorships" can be good things under just circumstances.

Emancipation Proclamation

The Emancipation Proclamation is an executive order issued by United States President Abraham Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War using his war powers. It proclaimed the freedom of slaves in the ten states then in rebellion, thus applying to 3.1 million of the 4 million slaves in the U.S. at that time. The Proclamation immediately freed 50,000 slaves, with nearly all the rest (of the 3.1 million) freed as Union armies advanced. The Proclamation did not compensate the owners, did not itself outlaw slavery, and did not make the ex-slaves (called freedmen) citizens.[1]

On September 22, 1862, Lincoln issued a preliminary proclamation that he would order the emancipation of all slaves in any state of the Confederate States of America that did not return to Union control by January 1, 1863. None returned, and the order, signed and issued January 1, 1863, took effect except in locations where the Union had already mostly regained control. The Proclamation made abolition a central goal of the war (in addition to reunion), outraged white Southerners who envisioned a race war, angered some Northern Democrats who thought it was unconstitutional, energized anti-slavery forces, and weakened forces in Europe that wanted to intervene to help the Confederacy.[2]

Slavery was made illegal everywhere in the U.S. by the Thirteenth Amendment, which took effect in December 1865.

Lincoln issued the Proclamation under his authority as "Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy" under Article II, section 2 of the United States Constitution.[3] As such, he had the martial power to suspend civil law in those states which were in rebellion. He did not have Commander-in-Chief authority over the four slave-holding states that had not declared a secession: Missouri, Kentucky, Maryland and Delaware. The Emancipation Proclamation was never challenged in court. To ensure the abolition of slavery everywhere in the U.S., Lincoln pushed for passage of the Thirteenth Amendment. Congress passed it by the necessary 2/3 vote in February 1865 and it was ratified by the states by December 1865.

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