Breaking: Obama supports gay marriage

iPhone.

 

If the Biden move wasn't intentional -- and I still have a feeling it might have been -- his mentioning of support for gay marriage pretty much forced Obama to take a position. Cabinet secretaries were being asked to take a stand. Hilda Solis, the Labor secretary, was in Chicago yesterday, and everyone wanted to ask her about marriage equality (she demurred).

I also think now is a good time to do it, politically, because it's not some October surprise that is going to rub people's raw nerves (either way) before the election. Voters are going to have time to think about this and absorb it, which is critical for those who are leaning toward same-sex marriage being OK, but aren't quite sure yet. Also, cynically speaking, Obama and his super PAC can start collecting dollars again from gay and progressive donors well in advance of the election.

 

I have to admit, YF, I am pleasantly surprised by your reaction.

 

Maybe Obama was waiting to see how the N.C. vote came out, maybe figured either that the result would be odious to a lot of voters on the fence, or figured that the vote indicated N.C. wasn't going to be in play for him so there was no reason to not express his (tactical?/genuine?) change of heart.

 

I'll be interested to see if Romney takes the bait here. The economy needs to be his strategy. Start making this election about values and it's a loser. The screeching eels with microphones will never fall in line and behave, but if I were running Romney's campaign, I'd almost ignore it. I might blow the dog whistle for the crazies, but it would be a fool's game to get drawn into this as a major issue. It really would.

 

You know who I think of? I think of that big guy in the, what was it, Earnhardt jacket, back in 2008? Who lent it to the two little old ladies in Obama shirts so they could vote, then realized he didn't want to have to tell his grandkids he had a chance to participate in something historic and voted for the other guy.

Hopefully this convinces a few people of the same -- rather than reluctantly accede to it, embrace it. And I dunno, maybe it convinces a few waffling voters that this is someone who has their back.

In other words, maybe it doesn't win him any new support. But it might win back some of 2008's.

 

The NORML folks are right now plotting how to smoke Biden out before his next public appearance.

I keed, I keed.

 

Really? Why? This has been YF's position from the very beginning and he has never wavered. I'm not surprised at all. I'm surprised Obama has done this before the election -- perhaps he was feeling the heat of people calling him cowardly -- but not by YF's reaction. Yankee Fan is a lot less straight party line and a lot more sincere than most here give him credit for.

As for Obama, I also applaud him. Assuming this is what he has believed all along (and there is no reason not to believe that), this was a statement he had to make. And it is the right one. And as I said on the other thread, I don't believe this will make one bit of difference at the polls.

 

It might indeed help re-energize some of his '08 supporters, though it's also fodder for another screetch-o-thon from his opponents, so I suspect in the end it's probably a wash.

It's the right thing to do, and not the easy thing, and that's rare enough that it feels very laudable, even if he can't affect policy much. I agree, big step forward, maybe enough of one that he feels like it's worth possibly costing him in November.

 

YF is also an example of why marriage discrimination won't survive the next couple decades. (Mizzou, too).

It's a generational issue more than it is an ideological issue.

 

This makes the most sense to me.
The NC vote really bothers me a lot. I don't know why, nobody expected anything different, but it does. If the majority can decide who the minority can marry, why would they stop there? If you put it up to a vote, I think most of my NC kinfolk wouldn't mind seeing nonProtestant worship banned.
Conservatives often talk about liberals imposing their values on others, and sometimes they have a point, but this is all that, in spades. I hope in the long run Obama's declaration is more memorable than the NC vote.

 

I think if you put school resegregation to a vote today, in all 50 states, it would win in at least a dozen of them. And they wouldn't all be in the South.