Gay marriage: Obama on the sidelines

last updated 8 January 2015

“I can’t quite believe that our first African-American president is sitting this one out,” said Steve Clemons in Huffingtonpost.com. The quest for full legal rights for gays, in the form of same-sex marriage, is “the biggest civil-rights movement of our time,” and it may be at a tipping point. Maine recently became the fifth state to legalize gay nuptials, and as other states consider joining this caravan, a vocal show of support by our popular and persuasive president could put gay marriage over the top. Yet when it comes to gay rights, Barack Obama is “MIA,” said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post. He also has been dragging his feet on his promise to eliminate the blatantly discriminatory—and nonsensical—“don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on gays in the military. Obama clearly has decided that he will save his political capital for other battles. But “equality means equality, and either you’re for it or you’re not.”

In other words, said National Review in an editorial, if you oppose gay marriage, you’re a “bigot” on the wrong side of history. Indeed, “one of the great coups of the movement for same-sex marriage has been to plant the premise that it represents the inevitable future.” In fact, most Americans still oppose gay marriage, and that doesn’t make them homophobes. They simply understand that “marriage exists to foster connections between heterosexual sex and the rearing of children within stable households.” Civil unions, which Obama supports, give gays legal protections without eviscerating the notion that “it is best for children to have mothers and fathers married to each other.”

Ah, so that’s Obama’s position? said Cheri Jacobus in TheHill.com. Pardon me if I’m a little confused. Campaigning for the Illinois state Senate in 1996, Obama supported same-sex marriage and vowed to “fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.” But as a presidential candidate in 2007, he backed civil unions and declared that, as “a Christian,” he believed marriage “is something sanctified between a man and a woman.” Now he apparently has a third position, saying last week through his spokesman that the issue is “best addressed by the states.” So which is Obama’s real position on gay marriage—the one he originally took, the Christian one, or this latest states’ rights dodge? The fight over gay marriage is at a critical point, and the press should be ashamed for letting Obama get away with taking every possible position on it, and none.