A step below undecideds.

I hate social issue voters. There are a few general reasons for this, the most important of which being that the President does a lot of different things, and social issues are, at best, an extremely small part of the job description. You need to make sure you like most of what a candidate says they'll do, not just the part that relates to your pet social issue. What follows is a more specific list, refuting the idea that social issues should be any major reason for your presidential vote.

1) Social issues are completely tied up with economic issues.
When people say that social issues are more important to them than economic ones, they're missing a fundamental point of how our society works. People, everything comes down to money. You can deny it all you want, but money makes the world go around. On a really simple level, it takes a lot of money to raise awareness about social issues. Even more importantly, though, the way a given society feels about hot button social issues is entirely dependent on a) how financially secure it is; and b) the structure of its economy. Third world countries don't care about social issues at all because feeding people is a much more important goal. Likewise, rich countries have plenty of time to debate social issues because we've reached the point where most of our population is pretty much irrelevant, productivity-wise. The thing is, America is not a rich country right now. As we've all heard a thousand times, most people can't pay their mortgages. The dollar is insanely weak in international trading. We have much more important fish to fry than debating things like abortion and gay rights.

2) Social issues are self-normalizing.
While the argument that the government has to step in sometimes to provide important social rights (see Brown v. Board of Education) is definitely valid, this can only happen when most of our nation has accepted a particular viewpoint. Brown was completely necessary, but it could not have happened before it did (unfortunately). If Brown had come to the Supreme Court even 10 years before it actually did, it would not have been successful. As it was, Brown was an extremely contentious decision that required 20 years of follow-up opinions from the Supreme Court. But the Court in Brown recognized something important--most states were already doing what they were telling a few hold-out Southern states to do. The Court didn't force integration on the nation before the entire country was ready. They just forced it on a few states who were behind the times. If Brown had been attempted too early, it would have FAILED.

A good example of this is the distinction between Bowers v. Hardwick and Lawrence v. Texas. Both cases deal with gay rights issues--specifically, whether it is constitutional for states to maintain laws that make consensual homosexual sexual activities conducted in the privacy of one's own home a criminal act. Bowers was decided in 1986. There, the Court decisively held that states were within their rights to make such activity criminal. The concurring opinion by Chief Justice Burger quoted William Blackstone's characterization of sodomy as "a crime not fit to be named." Burger concluded, "To hold that the act of homosexual sodomy is somehow protected as a fundamental right would be to cast aside millennia of moral teaching." This decision dealt a major blow to the cause for recognition of privacy rights for gay Americans, showing not only a disagreement with the proposed extension of the law, but also a revulsion for the lifestyle choice of homosexuals. This was mostly because the case came before the Court well before America was ready to address the issue. At the time, there was little awareness about gay issues, and most Americans were hostile to them. However, in 2003, the Court reversed itself in Lawrence, holding that consensual, private homosexual activity was part of an American's constitutional right to privacy. At that time, many of the states had eliminated anti-sodomy laws of their own accord. Additonally, most Americans (but obviously not all) were open to the idea that homosexual adults have the same privacy rights as heterosexual adults.

All of this history makes a key point. While the Supreme Court can (and many think that they should) step in to make a few hold-out states accede to the national majority viewpoint, they cannot change the country's mind before the country is ready. Information about the nation's stance on a particular social issue is available from a variety of sources--pop culture, news organizations, polling, and the list goes on. But a key source of this information is state law. Our federal system was designed exactly for this reason, allowing states to be testing labs for new ideas. If people don't like the direction their state is taking, they can move or have a more direct impact at the polls through greater accessibility. This is not true of the national government. You can't just pick up and move from the US quite as easily as you can cross state lines. Furthermore, the average American's representation in Washington is extremely indirect. However, at the state level, each citizen has a representative who serves a smaller area and is therefore more in tune with individual views. As such, states are, by far, the better representation of the people's stance on social issues. And when a majority of states have come around to a specific viewpoint, socially, it's a safe bet that the nation will, too. That is when the Supreme Court can act.

As of now, there are only two states that recognize gay marriage (although a handful recognize civil unions). Plainly, the nation is NOT ready to recognize gay marriage. Yet many people will vote for Barack because he is more friendly to this idea. (A side note: that's not even true, people--Barack explicitly admitted in the debates that he is not for gay marriage.) My point here, though, is not gay marriage specific. My point is that social issues will work themselves out through the testing grounds of the states. We should not pick our president because of something that he plainly should have nothing to do with. Social issues are borderline irrelevant to the presidency.

3) Whoever gets elected is not, NOT, going to overturn Roe.
I hear this all the time. "McCain wants to overturn Roe, so I'm voting for Obama. As a woman, you should too." This is total crap. Roe has been established Supreme Court precedent for 35 years, backed up by Casey (which reaffirmed its validity in 1992). Whether republicans disagree with the holding of Roe or not, the right to abortion has been in place for almost four decades. And the vast majority of Americans born in this time believe that there IS a right to choose. Overturning Roe would practically cause riots. NO COURT is going to step into that hornet's nest.
Additionally, McCain would have ZERO say over whether Roe stays or goes. That's the Supreme Court's decision. And McCain can only control the Supreme Court by naming nominees IF a sitting judge retires or dies. The only justice who's even CLOSE to that is Stevens. Furthermore, even if McCain gets to make a nomination, he has to get them past what is currently a democratic congress. No democratic legislature is going to let someone through who is gung-ho about obliterating Roe. The actual chances of Roe going anywhere are remote to nonexistent. Therefore, this is a moronic criterion on which to base one's vote.

I titled this post "A step below undecideds," because if you're undecided you have no idea what the issues are and you're casting a vote based on no real criteria. Social issues voters are a step below even that because they're basing their presidential vote on the WRONG criteria. When you select someone for a post as important as the president, this is not only idiotic, but also dangerous.