Month: May 2012

The Obamaites let go of fear and make this a choice election – between the future or the past:

One small note. Above, Romney says that we should not discard 3,000 years of history of one-man-one-woman marriage. Ahem. His own family were ardent polygamists only a century ago – and went to Mexican colonies to escape US federal oppression of their version of marriage (which also goes back a long, long way and still exists across the world). Romney's great-grandparents were polygamists; one of his his great-great-grandfathers had twelve wives and was murdered by the husband of the twelfth.

For Romney to say that the definition of marriage has remained the same for 3,000 years is  disproved by his own family. It's untrue. False. A lie.

I've long supported and will continue to support gay Republicans in their effort to move their party into the 21st century, as Shep Smith so pithily put it last night. But I have to say I was taken aback by the hackish partisanship these groups displayed on a day like yesterday. To be gay and be partisan yesterday seems to me like a classic example of what has gone wrong with our political conversation. Here's my friend, Clarke Cooper, of LCR:

"That the president has chosen today, when LGBT Americans are mourning the passage of Amendment One, to finally speak up for marriage equality is offensive and callous."

Anyone who watched that interview and believed that it was offensive and callous is, well, lost. Clarke thinks gay people should be "angry" today that it took Obama so long, while his own party leaders want to amend the federal constitution to ban all rights for gay couples for ever and refused to stand up publicly for a gay spokesman targeted solely because he was gay. GOProud isn't as bad but still off-key:

It is good to see that after intense political pressure that President Obama has finally come around to the Dick Cheney position on marriage equality.

But Cheney never lifted a finger anywhere to advance equality for his own daughter, was part of an administration that backed a federal constitutional amendment to ban marriage for gays for ever, reacted with disgust when John Edwards brought up the fact of his lesbian daughter in a debate, and got re-elected by exploiting anti-gay sentiment among Christianists in Ohio. And, since then, the GOP has become more dominated by Christianists, more ferociously anti-gay (remember the boos for a gay servicemember in one of the debates?) and more defined by its hostility to gay citizens than ever.

No deal, guys. Are you just nasty partisan hacks or part of a civil rights movement?

Tomasky gives the president free advice:

[T]his is what Obama needs to do: When the subject turns to this issue, he needs to make sure that Americans know that Romney opposes even civil unions, and that he would seek to outlaw gay marriage across the country, and he needs to make Romney defend those positions. Obama, in contrast, can say: "Hey, look, I took a personal position. I’m not trying to make Alabama or Oklahoma do anything they don’t want to do. But you, sir, would take already-won rights away from gay couples whose unions are now recognized in a number of states." And then he drops this bomb: "My position is no different from Dick Cheney’s. Is he outside the mainstream?"

David Link is in the same ballpark:

This is fine politics because it boxes Romney in with the worst part of his party. Karl Rove poisoned the well on this issue, and now Obama is making Romney drink, and drink deeply.

Alex Koppelman analyzes the Republican response:

They can say that he should be spending more time on jobs, say that he’s just trying to distract us. They can call him a flip-flopper. They wouldn’t be wrong to call him that—but that’s what you do when you’d really rather not debate your opponent on the merits of his argument. And it’s what most top Republicans are doing, thus far—that is, when they’re commenting at all.

Stephen Miller won't give up on the GOP:

The fact that today’s Republican party staunchly opposes gay equality should signal that this is where our efforts should be focused.

PM Carpenter wants the left to give the president a break:

I appreciate the slim possibility of this happening, but would the activist left now please shut the fuck up about what a coward President Obama is. He may have just kissed off a few swing states–and in the kick-off to a presidential reelection campaign, it doesn't get any gutsier than that.

Rob Tisinai trashes Obama's support of marriage equality federalism:

If Barack Obama, a professor of Constitutional Law, were on the Supreme Court, he would vote against us. Obama supports same-sex marriage, but he sees no Constitutional mandate. He thinks we should be treated equally, but he sees no Constitutional mandate. When it comes to this groundbreaking case, Barack Obama — believe it or not — is on the side of Maggie Gallagher, Brian Brown, and the National Organization for Marriage.

Weigel's view of the scenario:

I'm sure that Judge Obama would find some rationale for legalizing gay marriage in his state or district, if it came up, just as the Goodrich and Iowa judges found their reasons. Cook's right — Obama is saying remarkably very little when he reveals "personally, my personal position." The problem, when it comes to marriage, is that there's not much else he can say.

Balko points out that Obama is hardly a federalist in general:

Obama’s statement doesn’t change a single policy. He has basically adopted a federalist approach to the issue. To my knowledge, gay marriage also happens to be the only issue in which Obama embraces federalism. Obama apparently believes the states should be able to discriminate when it comes to marriage benefits, but if they allow cancer and AIDS patients to smoke pot, he asserts the supremacy of federal law, and sends in the SWAT teams. What a twisted set of priorities.

Josh Barro insists that marriage is a federal issue:

Some portion of marriage policy can be left up to the states. But gay marriage is also very much a federal issue requiring federal policy solutions. In the coming months, Barack Obama will need to address them, whether he wants to or not.

Pejman Yousefzadeh gives the president qualified praise:

[L]et’s not pretend that this was a moment in which Barack Obama strode to the mountaintop and courageously called for equal rights for same sex couples on his own initiative. That did not happen. The president was pushed and dragged to the mountaintop. That kind of thing happens a lot in civil rights struggles, so it may not be the world’s biggest deal. But that doesn’t mean we should ignore the fact that it happened in this instance.

Douthat gives the marriage equality movement credit:

As a gay marriage skeptic, I’m obviously on what’s likely to be the losing end of this shift. But as an observer of politics and culture —and someone who thinks that moral absolutisms have an important place in both — I can’t help but be impressed by the gay marriage movement’s ability to transform the terms of the marriage debate so completely and comprehensively. Politics is mostly the art of fighting over a muddled middle ground, but this is the way the world gets well and truly changed: Not through conciliation, but through conquest.

Earlier reaction here and here. My thoughts here.

(Photo: A vendor sells badges featuring pictures of US President-elect Barack Obama during a demonstration to condemn the ban of same-sex marriages in Los Angeles on November 15, 2008. By Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images)

A reader writes:

My Uncle passed in '96. His partner passed before him and his will was overturned, so my Uncle received the bare minimum after a more than decade-long relationship. At my Uncle's wake, the family of his partner showed up to take the few things away from his house (mainly furniture). It wrecked a day that should have been a time to say goodbye. I wish he was around to see a day like today. The ability to trivialize his relationship to a fling or something worse kills me. He and Robert were in love – that should be enough.

Another writes:

My husband and I had a dear friend.  He came to be like a grandparent to our children.  We met him at church and became friends.  He was my parents' age, married and with two grown children.  One Sunday we arranged for him to visit us – what would become the first of many visits over the years.  On that first visit he told us that he was gay.

He came out in his 70s but only to us.  To the rest of the world he was a straight, married, dad, music and animal lover.  Oh and opinionated, very opinionated. We also shared an admiration and respect for Barack Obama – his words, books, character, family – and we were both strong supporters.  Our friend also was in the closet about politics – not able to share his views with family, colleagues, many friends. So we would talk about Obama during our visits and we would often exchange emails, share videos, and generally just rant about politics.  He would tell me that he had seen many leaders in his almost 80 years and he wondered if Americans realized just how fortunate we were to have such an exceptional leader.  And yes, sometimes we would just comment on the President's engaging smile, sense of humor, and way of making people feel comfortable.

When our President announced his support of marriage equality today I immediately wanted to send the video to my friend.  And then it hit me that my friend died in January and that I couldn't share this extraordinary moment with him.  He lived almost 80 years and never heard a President affirm who he was.  How would his life be different if this moment had come when he was a young boy or a young man just out of the army, or before he married a woman?  He made the best of his life but he did wonder, did grieve for what he never was, for how he never lived.  

Somehow when the President of my country affirms marriage equality it feels like our nation is officially "out".  It feels like our LGBT brothers and sisters are officially accepted – even if not by everyone.  Ever since the announcement I can't stop crying for my country, for the pain of our past, for the pain yet to come, for the hope of a more perfect union realized, and for my friend.

(Photo: Standing with a character from his book Where the Wild Things Are, author and illustrator Maurice Sendak speaks with the media on January 11, 2002 before the opening of an exhibition entitled, "Maurice Sendak In His Own Words and Pictures," at the Childrens Museum of Manhattan in New York City. By Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

A reader briefs us on a situation remarkably similar to last year's legislative fight in New York:

There are some interesting developments with regard to the civil unions bill in Colorado that have been overshadowed by Obama's announcement and North Carolina's bigotry. Specifically, the civil unions bill passed the Senate and was voted through three committees in the Republican-controlled House (one of which was not remotely germane, suggesting that the Speaker's efforts to kill the bill were thwarted by members of his own party). Five House Republicans are reported to have voiced support for the bill, so it was certain to prevail on the floor. Rather than allowing that to happen, the House Speaker, Frank McNulty, declined to bring the bill to a vote on the floor before the session ended – effectively killing it.

But Governor Hickenlooper has just announced that he's called the legislature back for a special session to address several bills, including civil unions. What this likely means is that the procedural maneuvers Republicans employed yesterday to avoid the vote are not going to work – they will have to give the bill an up or down vote at some point, and it will likely pass.

More details here.

A reader writes:

In 1993, I went to the LGBT March on Washington, which, as it happened, was just after Colorado passed the first of its anti-gay laws. There were multiple contingents in the parade, as with any other pride event. I had a vantage point such that each contingent, with its banner, rounded a corner on the avenue. I will always remember seeing the Colorado contingent come into view, with its banner: COLORADO – GROUND ZERO.

"Ground zero" meant something else back then. But I wept. As I pulled into a restaurant parking space with my mother this afternoon, I heard Obama on the radio, and I wept again.

I carried water for Bush until I, like you, realized that I'd come up with a better strategy and rationale for the war in Iraq than he and his administration had. It's a sad commentary – as if my commentary means anything – on American politics that my immediate thought upon hearing this president, after my initial emotional reaction, was: if this is a strategy, if this is triangulation, if you don't mean this…

I couldn't even finish the thought.

I hate that I so distrust our leadership. If nothing comes of this … my god, I can't bear it.

(Photo: Two unidentified men kiss outside the White House gates during a gay pride march on April 25, 1993. Via Getty Images.)

A reader points to another "measure of progress":

In 2004, the GOP pushed anti-gay-marriage amendments in 11 states in order to drive conservative voter turnout in the general election. Bush may well have carried Ohio because of the amendment, and amendments likely tipped some number of Congressional elections.  Less than a decade later, the North Carolina amendment was scheduled for a primary election, rather than a general, because even in a state well to the right of Ohio, Michigan and Oregon (which all passed anti-gay-marriage amendments by wide margins in 2004), this amendment would've likely failed in a high-turnout election today.

A reader sends the above image and writes:

On occasions of illumination, you often post photos of the sunflowers that greeted the guests at your wedding. Interestingly, they were placed on the ground looking up at those who would happen to pass by, allowing their full face to be seen. Sunflowers happen to play an important image in The Tree of Life, as they cannot avoid but to gaze at the light that sustains them.  They have become for me a new seed of contemplation.

From a review of the film:

[The sunflowers] might be Malick’s way of saying that we are all the same, yet different, and that the intent of this movie was to show you pieces of his own life and parts of his own imagination in order to spark similar reflections in the viewer.

My initial reaction to Obama's announcement yesterday was recorded by NPR – it's available here.

A reader writes:

Today takes away the free pass that so many Republicans have had. While some Republicans may favor gay marriage, and abhor the bigoted policies of their own party, they could still rationalize that support in their own minds. They could say, and not entirely without merit, that sure the Republican party is wrong on this issue, but so what? Were the Democrats really that much better? Isn't the President against gay marriage too? Prior to today, they could say that. But no more. That free pass has now ended.

President Obama saw to that. I have seen comparison of this decision to Abraham Lincoln, but I'll introduce another – to Harry Truman. Truman integrated the Armed Services in 1948, his presidential election year, and Obama just followed in his footsteps. And like Truman, Obama cannot possibly know how this will turn out for him politically in November. But he knew it was the right thing to do so he made the decision, and will let the political chips fall where they may.

This November, we Americans will choose between one candidate who recently bragged about preventing Massachusetts from becoming the "Las Vegas of Gay Marriage," to one who has the moral courage to voice equal support for all citizens.

No more equivocation on language, no more gray areas, and no more passing the buck. Today, President Obama, like President Truman before him, can proudly say, the buck stops here.