But What Does He *Really* Believe
Jamie Kirchick has a good piece in the Post criticizing those liberals who just assume that because President Obama is so intelligent and cosmopolitan, he must support gay marriage. This persistent belief isn’t a total fantasty: for one, educational attainment and “cosmopolitan-ness” are associated with greater support for gay rights, and two, Obama, in 1996, did write on a questionnaire that “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.”
But since 1996, and more importantly, since January 20th, 2009, Obama hasn’t exaclty backed up those words. Most importantly, he and his spokespeople always say that he supports same-sex unions. On this point, I see no reason not to take him at his word.
But this entire business about trying to figure out what anyone “actually believes” on gay marriage is really quite silly. I could care less about politicians “actually” believe about anything. Does once hard-core pro-lifer Dick Durbin actually support reproductive rights? I don’t know, but he votes the right way on them. And the fact that Bill Clinton now supports gay marriage, despite being partially responsible for the biggest institutional roadblack to gay marriage in America (DOMA) doesn’t exactly make me feel much better about him.
Maybe if Obama spearheaded a repeal of DOMA, I could buy the crypto-support of gay marriage argument, and yes, he has said he supports a repeal (though, like DADT, he’s gotten murky on this since actually becoming president).
But until we see Obama actually risk anything to support gay rights legislation or executive action, we should just take him at this word and not project our hopes onto him.
I also think it’s irrelevant what Obama thinks in his private head about marriage (my take: it’s simply not that important an issue to him, not necessarily that he actively opposes it), but I suspect for very different reasons than Kirchick.
I maintain that marriage is not the most important thing LGBT rights need right now. I care WAY more whether Obama thinks LGBT people have the right to serve openly in the military, or the right not to be fired from their jobs on the basis of sexual orientation, or the right to walk down the street without being harassed by police (see http://www.washblade.com/2009/7-31/news/localnews/14939.cfm).
LGBT rights activists had the opportunity to agitate for parts of the welfare state being accessible outside of marriage (wrt the tax code, Aid to Families With Dependent Children, etc), and instead they decided it would be easier just to push for marriage. I see why that seemed more pragmatic, but buying into the marriage paradigm has ultimately been limiting for the movement.
Emily
August 1, 2009 at 12:54 pm