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One of my favorite essayists, Richard Just of The New Republic, has a new article out on President Obama and gay marriage. Here's an excerpt (don't miss the 1996-to-2010 timeline linked to below):
My colleague James Downie has assembled a fascinating timeline of Obama’s statements on gay marriage over the past 14 years, stretching from 1996 to earlier this month, when the White House responded to a judge’s ruling on Prop 8 by reiterating that it opposes same-sex marriage. What the timeline shows is a pattern that can only be described as illogical and cynical. Obama argues that he is against gay marriage while also opposing efforts like Prop 8 that would ban it. He justifies this by saying that state constitutions should not be used to reduce rights. (His exact words: "I am not in favor of gay marriage, but when you’re playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that that is not what America is about.")Read the full article here.
Obama appears to be saying that it is fine to prohibit gay people from getting married, as long as the vehicle for doing so is not a constitution. Presumably, then, he supports the numerous states that have banned same-sex marriage through other means, without resorting to a constitutional amendment? If so, he might be the only person in the country to occupy this narrow, and frankly absurd, slice of intellectual terrain. Obama has also said he favors civil unions rather than gay marriage because the question of where and how to apply the label "marriage" is a religious one. This argument makes even less sense than his stance on state constitutions, since marriage, for better or for worse, is very much a government matter.
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I don't quite agree. I believe Obama is saying that he PERSONALLY doesn't agree with gay marriage, but, he doesn't believe that it should go further than opinion. He's entitled to have his opinion about gay marriage and he doesn't agree, which is fine. He may agree with the states that have banned it but there are some states that haven't. Every state is entitled to make it legal or not. We should focus on these state legislators and less on Obama. He's never going to ban same sex marriage in the constitution. I honestly believe that no one will. Too controversial. If we want same sex marriage to be legal, we HAVE to focus on our own towns.
I think that we should actually applaud this. Although he is conflicted/doesn't necessarily believe in it, he is still willing to fight for it (such as in the effort to pass a repeal of Don't Ask/Don't Tell). It takes a strong person to set aside their ideals in order to see the bigger picture, which I think that he is doing.