Vice President Joe Biden finally said Sunday what gay marriage supporters have been waiting for President Barack Obama to say — but his office’s immediate effort to walk back those comments provided another convoluted step in the White House’s evolution on the issue that’s already maddening the LGBT community.
Biden’s comments come on the verge of the North Carolina gay marriage ban vote Tuesday that was already causing major frustration for gay marriage supporters toward Obama: The president’s against the proposed state constitutional amendment, even though he isn’t pro-gay marriage. They’ve also noticed that though his campaign issued a statement on that position in March and another one like it last month for a similar measure going before voters in Minnesota, the statement didn’t come from the president himself.
In other words, the moves meant to add to the president’s long list of statements and policies favoring gay rights have for many gay rights activists instead highlighted the biggest thing missing from that list: The president completing his self-described evolution and backing full marriage equality.
“You can see it like teasing,” said Kevin Cathcart, the executive director of Lambda Legal, which leads court cases to expand gay rights around the country. “There is sometimes a disconnect between the administration and the community, because I think they think they’re doing brave important things and a lot of people on the ground think, ‘Oh, come on already.’”
Biden’s comments sounded like the impassioned position of someone endorsing gay marriage — he spoke of love and loyalty, recounted meeting two children being raised by a gay couple and wanting the whole country to see what he saw, and talked about equality as a common sense issue.
“I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties,” Biden said on “Meet the Press,” in his first interview since Obama formally kicked off the reelection campaign. “And quite frankly, I don’t see much of a distinction beyond that.”
Within minutes, though, Biden’s office was insisting that Biden hadn’t broken any new ground, telling POLITICO, “The Vice President was saying what the President has said previously – that committed and loving same-sex couples deserve the same rights and protections enjoyed by all Americans, and that we oppose any effort to rollback those rights.”
Biden’s spokesperson then put the vice president right back in Obama’s rhetorical balancing act, saying “the Vice President was expressing that he too is evolving on the issue, after meeting so many committed couples and families in this country.”
Obama is on record as being against marriage discrimination efforts since he opposed California’s Proposition 8 during the 2008 campaign. But as the conventional wisdom hardens that Obama personally supports gay marriage but has let politics keep him from saying so publicly, the latest statements from the campaign are turning impatience into anger.
The Obama campaign’s message on gay marriage reflects what’s already become a recognizable theme in messages to other parts of the base: He may not be all they want, but at least he’s better than the other guy. After all, goes the argument, look at Obama’s record versus the positions and signed pledge that earned Mitt Romney the endorsement of the traditionalist National Organization for Marriage last month.
Not exactly the stuff enthusiasm is made of for gay marriage advocates. As much as they applaud what the president’s done on gay rights since taking office, LGBT advocates say Obama’s opposition to gay marriage bans without backing gay marriage is the clearest example of not doing enough.
“It gives the people who are frustrated further proof to say, ‘That’s nice, he’s saying don’t amend the Constitution.’ But where is he?” Cathcart said. “I’m not saying it doesn’t matter where this vote goes, but at the end of each of those election days, no one is going to be able to get married in North Carolina and Minnesota.”
In addition to the North Carolina and Minnesota votes, there are legalization efforts under way in Washington state, Maryland and Maine — where, for the first time, voters will decide whether to grant equal marriage rights, rather than take them away.
Constantly through the campaign, Obama’s going to be in states where marriage is either on the ballot, in the courts, has been recently legalized or where past bans have still left simmering anger.
Add in the brewing fight to include a marriage equality plank in the convention platform, and the calendar will be full of reminders to LGBT advocates of how they see Obama falling short on the issue — dampening their passion at the very moment Obama needs them and the rest of the base to turn out in force to compensate for losses elsewhere.
“It’s not enough to be against against-marriage. The president needs to be forthrightly for the freedom to marry,” said Freedom to Marry Executive Director Evan Wolfson, who’s helping lead the fight to get the marriage equality plank in the convention platform.
“It is a thin but stark line between being against discrimination and for equality,” said Rea Carey, the executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. “It is very noticeable to same-sex couples that he has not clearly stated his support for our lives and our families.”
For the most part, LGBT advocates see Obama as the most supportive president they’ve ever had, the marriage question aside. And that’s the story Obama’s campaign will tell — without marriage and with many references to Romney.
“The president has done more to advance gay rights than any other — from keeping his word to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, to granting hospital visitation rights to gay partners to signing the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law. He has also called for repeal of the so-called ‘Defense of Marriage Act’ and stopped defending it in court until the time it can be repealed legislatively,” said Clo Ewing, a spokesperson for the Obama campaign.
“That record stands in stark contrast to Mitt Romney’s, who promised to be to the left of Senator Kennedy on gay rights and then made clear he would have left Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell in place and has endorsed divisive and discriminatory efforts that roll back rights and benefits for gay Americans.”
The Romney campaign did not respond to request for comment.
How and to which audiences the president will make that case himself is still being worked out by the campaign. But even his strong supporters in the LGBT community are eager to hear him talk openly and forcefully about not just what he’s done, but what he would do in a second term in areas such as workplace discrimination, despite the president’s decision not to sign an executive order instituting a ban.
Obama’s overall gay rights record, rather than the president’s position on the Minnesota and North Carolina measures, should be driving the conversation, said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solomnese.
“Members of the LGBT community all across this country want to continue to hear that the circumstances of their lives, the genuine inequities they face, are at the forefront of the president’s thinking. That goes beyond a particular statement around a particular ballot measure, although those things are enormously important,” Solomnese said.
Though most gay-rights advocates have given up hope that the president will come out in favor of gay marriage — with, say, the kind of solemn, heartfelt speech he delivered on race in 2008 — they want him to know they’re on to what he’s doing and they’re not impressed.
Obama’s perceived reluctance to say what’s in his heart is particularly grating for a community with a history of fearing being open.
“They are speaking in code. They are putting out these very nuanced statements which come right up to the line, but which don’t fully endorse marriage equality. It’s really hard to believe that this is sustainable,” said Richard Socarides, a New York attorney and who advised President Bill Clinton on gay rights issues.
The situation’s only likely to get thornier as November nears. Convention chair Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has said he’d like to see gay marriage support written in to the party platform, adding emphasis to an effort that’s picking up more support and attention. That’s a symbolic fight for a symbolic plank in a symbolic document, but one with all the makings of a crackling cable news inferno in an otherwise drama-free convention — and one imbued with increasing significance now that the president is on record opposing a state ban that will have been decided by the time he accepts his party’s nomination there.
Socarides warned that he sees votes well beyond those in LGBT community at stake as Obama tries to press his careful logic on gay marriage to a nuance-adverse voting public.
“Voters like authenticity, and ‘evolving’ as a position is about as inauthentic as you can get,” Socarides said.
The people involved in the state campaigns say they’re focused on their own efforts, and not the larger debate.
Jeremy Kennedy, the campaign manager for The Coalition to Protect North Carolina Families that’s leading the opposition to the ban there, said he’s confident that the show of support from the Obama campaign has moved votes in their direction, even though it wasn’t from the president himself.
“There’s what we’ve got, and there’s a lot of things in between all the way up to doing a personal appearance for the campaign in the state — of course, that’s what we would have loved,” Kennedy said. “But I think when it comes to voters, all voters hear is President Obama opposes Amendment 1, regardless of how it was said.”
Kennedy declined comment on the juxtaposition of the president opposing the ban while not supporting legalization, but pointed out that he thinks the president is in line with many voters in hesitating on legalization even though they’re against official restrictions and for civil unions.
The attention from the Obama campaign’s support is helping anti-ban efforts in Minnesota too, said Kate Brickman, the press secretary for the anti-ban Minnesotans United for All Families.
“The great thing about it is it’s sparking the conversations here that Minnesotans are going to have with other Minnesotans,” Brickman said.
Meanwhile in Maine, which is reaching the culmination of a three-year effort to overturn a 2009 referendum that itself overturned the gay marriage legalization signed by the governor, the leaders of the legalization campaign aren’t counting on getting their own show of support from Obama.
Mainers United for Marriage campaign manager Matt McTighe acknowledged the difference between Obama’s position in the other states and what he’d have to do to back their campaign to legalize gay marriage. While he’d be eager to have an Obama campaign statement of his own, “it’s not a critical part of our plan to get the president to come out,” he said.
After all, Obama couldn’t support the effort in Maine — or in Maryland or Washington — without giving a stronger answer to the questions that the Minnesota and North Carolina actions brought up again.
“That,” Carey said, “would require him to put both feet on the path to marriage equality.”
No comments:
Post a Comment