At any rate, there seems to be a new controversy over Obama's position on same-sex marriage, and his own fancy dancing on the issue sort of irritates me. Andrew Sullivan seems to have pulled together some threads of the debate. The starter for this one seems to be Obama's remarks in coming out against the California anti-marriage amendment. This from John Aravosis at AmericaBlog:
From the Sac Bee:
In a letter to the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club read Sunday at the group's annual Pride Breakfast in San Francisco, the Illinois senator said he supports extending "fully equal rights and benefits to same-sex couples under both state and federal law."
"And that is why I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states," Obama wrote.
Well, full equal rights is marriage. But I personally don't expect the Democratic nominee to embrace that, and win, yet. We still have much work to do on our end to make sure that embracing marriage is not a kiss of death for our candidates.
I get the feeling that Obama is deliberately trying to blur the issue for political reasons, although there is a sensible position implicit in his remarks: he's on record as believing that marriage is the one man/one woman thing, but he's opposing efforts to encode that into the law and wants to repeal the federal DOMA. It's there, but given the dumbing of election coverage, maybe he needs to be more explicit -- somehow, the press doesn't seem to be able to connect the dots, maybe because they take their analysis from the right wing, which doesn't want to connect the dots. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a refreshing contrast, as witness this story from Pam's House Blend:
MR. BROKAW: You have a lot of propositions on the ballot again this fall. One of them would mean a constitutional ban on gay marriages. Do you support that?
GOV. SCHWARZENEGGER: No, not at all. As a matter of fact, I think the Supreme Court made a decision there. It was apparently unconstitutional to stop anyone from getting married. It's like 1948, the interracial marriage, when the Supreme Court of California has, you know, decided it was unconstitutional and then later on the Supreme Court of the United States followed, I think 10 or 12 years later. So I think it is, it's good that California lead--is leading in this way. I personally believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman. But at the same time I think that my, you know, belief, I don't want to force on anyone else, so I think we should stay with the decision of the Supreme Court and move forward. There are so many other more important issues that we have to address in California. So I think to spend any time on this initiative I think is a waste of time.
That's the kind of clarity I'd like to see out of Obama on this issue. It's not so hard, you know, and reinforces a basic tenet of American governance: fundamental rights are not subject to majority vote.
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