Tag Archives: marriage equality

Obama v. Clinton on Gays II

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I’m actually getting tired of the “who’s better for the gays” debate on Obama and Clinton. I think they’re actually pretty similar when it comes to gay rights.

There’s an interview in the Blade today with Hillary about gay rights. While Obama thinks DOMA should be completely repealed, Hillary isn’t ready to repeal the section that allows states to ignore what other states say about gay marriage.

Ideally, DOMA should be completely repealed. But I do understand Hillary’s support for keeping the part about state recognition, for now. That section of the law does keep some people from supporting the FMA, because they say that as long as states can do what they want, there’s no need for an amendment banning same-sex marriage nationwide. (Same-sex-marriage states can’t “infect” other states, if one were to put it in so unfortunate a manner.) We don’t live in an ideal world.

Also, as I’ve pointed out before, even though same-sex marriage is an issue that’s very important to me personally, there are so many issues that are more important and will affect many more people, such as health care, foreign policy, and a president’s general ability to lead and/or get things done. Same-sex marriage seems fated to remain a state-by-state issue for the foreseeable future.

Some people talk about Bill Clinton’s signing of DOMA in 1996 and say that it wasn’t his idea, that it was forced on him by the Republicans. It’s true that it wasn’t his idea; but he was safely ahead in the 1996 election (which he wound up winning by 9 points) and he didn’t have to sign it. Unfortunately, this was at the beginning of his triangulation-and-Dick-Morris era. He spent no political capital protecting us.

DOMA might very well be the only thing preventing a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage right now, but I’ll always be peeved at Bill for signing it.

Kristol Begins

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Bill Kristol’s first column for the New York Times — which runs in tomorrow’s paper — shows that he at least has a sense of humor.

We don’t want to increase the scope of the nanny state, we don’t want to undo the good done by the appointments of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court, and we really don’t want to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory in Iraq.

Oh. You mean he was being serious?

[Mike Huckabee] began by calmly mentioning his and Obama’s contrasting views on issues from guns to life to same-sex marriage. This served to remind Republicans that these contrasts have been central to G.O.P. success over the last quarter-century, and to suggest that Huckabee could credibly and comfortably make the socially conservative case in an electorally advantageous way.

So Kristol advocates running on the wedge issues. Not only is he ideologically blinkered — he also supports cynical politics. Does he have any redeeming qualities as a thinker?

Greenwald on Vitter & Craig

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In comparing Republican reactions to the Larry Craig and David Vitter scandals, Glenn Greenwald makes a great point, one that has been made many times but bears repeating.

The only kind of “morality” that this [right-wing] movement knows or embraces is politically exploitative, cost-free morality. That is why the national Republican Party rails endlessly against homosexuality and is virtually mute about divorce and adultery: because anti-gay moralism costs virtually all of its supporters nothing (since that is a moral prohibition that does not constrain them), while heterosexual moral deviations — from divorce to adultery to sex outside of marriage — are rampant among the Values Voters faithful and thus removed from the realm of condemnation. Hence we have scads of people sitting around opposing same-sex marriage because of their professed belief in “Traditional Marriage” while their “third husbands” and multiple step-children and live-in girlfriends sit next to them on the couch.

They’re all willing to cheer on the “rules of traditional marriage” which do not impose on them in any way (marriage must have a man and a woman — no problem there). But no “Family Values” politician could possibly survive politically by seeking to enshrine with the force of law all of the other equally important prongs of “Traditional Marriage” (all of that dreary, outdated “until death do us part” business which would deny the “right” for Values Voters to dump their wives and move on to the “next wife” when the mood strikes, or remain shacked up with their various girlfriends and the like).

In other words, it’s always easy to demonize The Other.