Obama and gay marriage

„One of the most striking aspects of the recent Republican Party Presidential debate was the way the candidates, each in his own way, tried to out-do each other in their disdain for gay marriage and their willingness—nay, their ardent vows!—to do everything possible to make sure that homosexual couples never gain the right to matrimony. One day soon, someone will play back that debate as an exercise in historical shame, much as we now watch documentary clips of serene racial bigots denouncing the efforts of the black freedom movement in days of yore.

Which makes one happy and relieved that our President, when asked in a questionnaire fifteen years ago, while running for the Illinois State Senate, whether he was for gay marriage, checked the box marked »yes«. Which meant that he was both right and early on the issue.

Unfortunately, Obama readily reversed himself in subsequent campaigns, backtracking to the politically safer ground of favoring civil unions. His rationale, presumably, was that he was no longer trying to win over liberal Hyde Park; in 2004, he had to win the state of Illinois and, in 2008, the country.

The mystery is why Obama chose to make gay marriage the subject of the worst, least sincere, and most mealy-mouthed moment of his 2008 Presidential campaign. Obama, an intelligent man steeped in civil-rights history, was never so disappointing as when he sat with Pastor Rick Warren, at a televised appearance in front of twenty-eight hundred evangelicals, and won applause for his declaration »that marriage is the union between a man and a woman. Now, for me as a Christian, it’s also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.«”