Gay Marriage

1.

What Does Obama Really Think About Gay Marriage? A Telling Timeline.

* James Downie
* August 19, 2010 12:00 am//TNR

In the gay marriage debate, President Obama says that he supports civil unions for same-sex couples. But has this always been his view? A look back at his statements on gay marriage, from his days as a state senate candidate until his time in the White House, suggests that Obama's public stance has shifted notably:

1996: In response to a questionnaire from Outlines newspaper (now part of Windy City Times), Obama, a candidate for the Illinois state senate seat representing the wealthy Hyde Park neighborhood of Chicago, writes, “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages." Eight years later, in a letter to Windy City Times, Obama would say that he opposed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) of 1996, calling it “an effort to demonize people for political advantage” that should be repealed.

1998: Responding to an Illinois State Legislative National Political Awareness Test: “Q: Do you believe that the Illinois government should recognize same-sex marriages? A: Undecided.”

2004: In an interview with Windy City Times, Obama mentions the religious dimension of the gay marriage debate, says he supports civil unions, and indicates that his stance is dictated in large part by political strategy:

Obama: I think that marriage, in the minds of a lot of voters, has a religious connotation. I know that's true in the African-American community, for example. And if you asked people, 'should gay and lesbian people have the same rights to transfer property, and visit hospitals, and et cetera,' they would say, 'absolutely.' And then if you talk about, 'should they get married?', then suddenly…

WCT: There are more than 1,000 federal benefits that come with marriage. Looking back in the 1960s and inter-racial marriage, the polls showed people against that as well.

Obama: Since I'm a product of an interracial marriage, I'm very keenly aware of ...

WCT: But you think, strategically, gay marriage isn't going to happen so you won't support it at this time?

Obama: What I'm saying is that strategically, I think we can get civil unions passed. I think we can get SB 101 [which would add “sexual orientation” to Illinois’s non-discrimination laws] passed. I think that to the extent that we can get the rights, I'm less concerned about the name.”

2006: In his bestseller, The Audacity of Hope, Obama, now a U.S. senator, explains his support for civil unions, again mentioning religion and noting the strategic problems that the push for gay marriage poses:

For many practicing Christians, the inability to compromise may apply to gay marriage. I find such a position troublesome, particularly in a society in which Christian men and women have been known to engage in adultery or other violations of their faith without civil penalty. I believe that American society can choose to carve out a special place for the union of a man and a woman as the unit of child rearing most common to every culture. I am not willing to have the state deny American citizens a civil union that confers equivalent rights no such basic matters as hospital visitation or health insurance coverage simply because the people they love are of the same sex—nor am I willing to accept a reading of the Bible that considers an obscure line in Romans to be more defining of Christianity than the Sermon on the Mount. …The heightened focus on marriage is a distraction from other, attainable measures to prevent discrimination and gays and lesbians. (pp. 222-3)

July 2007: At the CNN/YouTube Democratic primary debate in Charleston, South Carolina, Obama discusses interracial versus gay marriage and says that it should be up to individual religions whether they recognize civil unions as marriages:

Anderson Cooper: Senator Obama, the laws banning interracial marriage in the United States were ruled unconstitutional in 1967. What is the difference between a ban on interracial marriage and a ban on gay marriage?

Obama: Well, I think that it is important to pick up on something that was said earlier by both Dennis [Kucinich] and by Bill [Richardson], and that is that we've got to make sure that everybody is equal under the law. And the civil unions that I proposed would be equivalent in terms of making sure that all the rights that are conferred by the state are equal for same-sex couples as well as for heterosexual couples.

Now, with respect to marriage, it's my belief that it's up to the individual denominations to make a decision as to whether they want to recognize marriage or not. But in terms of, you know, the rights of people to transfer property, to have hospital visitation, all those critical civil rights that are conferred by our government, those should be equal.

August 2007: At the Human Rights Campaign/Logo gay issues debate, also during the Democratic primaries, Obama emphasizes the religious importance of the term “marriage” and explains why civil unions aren’t discriminatory:

Q: If you were back in the Illinois legislature where you served and the issue of civil marriage came before you, how would you have voted on that?

A: My view is that we should try to disentangle what has historically been the issue of the word “marriage,” which has religious connotations to some people, from the civil rights that are given to couples, in terms of hospital visitation, in terms of whether or not they can transfer property or Social Security benefits and so forth. So it depends on how the bill would’ve come up. I would’ve supported and would continue to support a civil union that provides all the benefits that are available for a legally sanctioned marriage. And it is then, as I said, up to religious denominations to make a determination as to whether they want to recognize that as marriage or not.

Q: On the grounds of civil marriage, can you see to our community where [your stance of separating gay rights from the word “marriage”] comes across as sounding like “separate but equal”?

A: Look, when my parents got married in 1961, it would have been illegal for them to be married in a number of states in the South. So obviously, this is something that I understand intimately, it’s something that I care about. But if I were advising the civil rights movement back in 1961 about its approach to civil rights, I would have probably said it’s less important that we focus on an anti-miscegenation law than we focus on a voting rights law and a non-discrimination and employment law and all the legal rights that are conferred by the state. Now, it’s not for me to suggest that you shouldn’t be troubled by these issues. But my job as president is going to be to make sure that the legal rights that have consequences on a day to day basis for loving same sex couples all across the country.

2008: In an interview with MTV, Obama says he opposes Prop 8, but also gay marriage. Civil unions, the candidate says, are sufficient:

I have stated my opposition to [Prop 8]. I think it is unnecessary. I believe that marriage is between a man and woman and I am not in favor of gay marriage, but when you're playing around with constitutions, just to prohibit somebody who cares about another person, it just seems to me that that is not what America is about. Usually constitutions expand liberties, they don't contract them. What I believe is that if we have strong civil unions out there that provide legal rights to same-sex couples that they can visit each other in the hospital if they get sick, that they can transfer property to each other. If they've got benefits, they can make sure those benefits apply to their partners. I think that is the direction we need to go.

2010: After the Perry decision, which struck down Prop 8, the White House releases this statement: “The president has spoken out in opposition to Proposition 8 because it is divisive and discriminatory. He will continue to promote equality for LGBT Americans." Meanwhile, White House senior adviser David Axelrod tells MSNBC that Obama "does oppose same-sex marriage, but he supports equality for gay and lesbian couples. … He supports civil unions. That’s been his position throughout. So nothing has changed."


Me: I take a more critical view of Obama on this issue, I think.

I only qualify my criticism by my recognition of the need for nearly any politician to carve, compromise, swerve, spin, dissemble and accommodate as a matter of sheer politics.

Obama's faith makes me doubt whether it's so easy to say that he is personally committed to gay marriage. I prefer to take him at his word on the issue.

But take, for example, this quote which leapt out at me:

...But if I were advising the civil rights movement back in 1961 about its approach to civil rights, I would have probably said it’s less important that we focus on an anti-miscegenation law than we focus on a voting rights law and a non-discrimination and employment law and all the legal rights that are conferred by the state...

Where the line gets drawn between principle and engaging the art of the possible is case by case. But isn't this going too far in shoring up a present day political accommodation to those--some even bigots--opposing gay marriage, i.e. denying equality under the law?

Finally, Obama could have framed a position similar to the way litigators plead in the alternative: if not A, then B.

He could have framed a position that recognized the need for, and lawfulness of, gay marriage but in the meantime, without compromising that recognition, ensured vigilantly supporting civil unions. It's hollow, I think, as a principled position to write off marriage as just a word. It's a bed rock, fundamental, culturally suffused, identity giving social institution for believers and atheists--like me--alike.

Icarusr:

Basman: you know what would have happened to Obama if he had followed your advice.

Reminds me of the old saw about the pious Mullah who, on calling for prayer, intoned, "lA elAh-a ..." ("there is no god ..."), before he was cut down by an assassin. The poor schmuck wakes up and finds himself at the Gates of Hell. He wonders why and is told that he is a heretic. "But," the Mullah says, utterly confused, "the assassin didn't let me finish with 'el-Allah' (but for God/Allah)." Right Wing assassins of American politicial discourse never let you fin-

Me in response:

His unacceptable position is that he would have told civil rights leaders in 1961 not to worry so much about anti-miscegenation law--i.e., to put it starkly, American blacks are not good enough to marry American whites.

Is my reaction presentism?

In 1961, I was 15 years old and was shocked then that there were laws prohibiting inter racial marriage as part of equally shocking explicit American de jure racism.

In 1963 the ACLU intervened in Loving, which presented itself as a prime target for attacking those laws in Virginia. In fact there were previous cases floating around in other states chipping away at their constitutionality. The ultimate vindication by SCOTUS had amazing values-changing resonance throughout America. I don't see that litigation as having dissipated or diverted energy from the civil rights battles of times.

Just the opposite.

So as one-me-who sees no difference in principle between those laws and any gay marriage proscriptions, I am not so sympathetic to politicians trimming on the issue, though I understand political reality. And taking Obama at his word--that he does not support gay marriage because of his faith--I find his position even more troubling.

Finally, I contend that there is/must be a way of framing a position of principled support for this basic equal right that's not politically suicidal.


2. Douthat:

August 8, 2010

The Marriage Ideal

By ROSS DOUTHAT NYT

Here are some commonplace arguments against gay marriage: Marriage is an ancient institution that has always been defined as the union of one man and one woman, and we meddle with that definition at our peril. Lifelong heterosexual monogamy is natural; gay relationships are not. The nuclear family is the universal, time-tested path to forming families and raising children.

These have been losing arguments for decades now, as the cause of gay marriage has moved from an eccentric- seeming notion to an idea that roughly half the country supports. And they were losing arguments again last week, when California’s Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that laws defining marriage as a heterosexual union are unconstitutional, irrational and unjust.

These arguments have lost because they’re wrong. What we think of as “traditional marriage” is not universal. The default family arrangement in many cultures, modern as well as ancient, has been polygamy, not monogamy. The default mode of child-rearing is often communal, rather than two parents nurturing their biological children.

Nor is lifelong heterosexual monogamy obviously natural in the way that most Americans understand the term. If “natural” is defined to mean “congruent with our biological instincts,” it’s arguably one of the more unnatural arrangements imaginable. In crudely Darwinian terms, it cuts against both the male impulse toward promiscuity and the female interest in mating with the highest-status male available. Hence the historic prevalence of polygamy. And hence many societies’ tolerance for more flexible alternatives, from concubinage and prostitution to temporary arrangements like the “traveler’s marriages” sanctioned in some parts of the Islamic world.

So what are gay marriage’s opponents really defending, if not some universal, biologically inevitable institution? It’s a particular vision of marriage, rooted in a particular tradition, that establishes a particular sexual ideal.

This ideal holds up the commitment to lifelong fidelity and support by two sexually different human beings — a commitment that involves the mutual surrender, arguably, of their reproductive self-interest — as a uniquely admirable kind of relationship. It holds up the domestic life that can be created only by such unions, in which children grow up in intimate contact with both of their biological parents, as a uniquely admirable approach to child-rearing. And recognizing the difficulty of achieving these goals, it surrounds wedlock with a distinctive set of rituals, sanctions and taboos.

The point of this ideal is not that other relationships have no value, or that only nuclear families can rear children successfully. Rather, it’s that lifelong heterosexual monogamy at its best can offer something distinctive and remarkable — a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations — that makes it worthy of distinctive recognition and support.

Again, this is not how many cultures approach marriage. It’s a particularly Western understanding, derived from Jewish and Christian beliefs about the order of creation, and supplemented by later ideas about romantic love, the rights of children, and the equality of the sexes.

Or at least, it was the Western understanding. Lately, it has come to co-exist with a less idealistic, more accommodating approach, defined by no-fault divorce, frequent out-of-wedlock births, and serial monogamy.

In this landscape, gay-marriage critics who fret about a slippery slope to polygamy miss the point. Americans already have a kind of postmodern polygamy available to them. It’s just spread over the course of a lifetime, rather than concentrated in a “Big Love”-style menage.

If this newer order completely vanquishes the older marital ideal, then gay marriage will become not only acceptable but morally necessary. The lifelong commitment of a gay couple is more impressive than the serial monogamy of straights. And a culture in which weddings are optional celebrations of romantic love, only tangentially connected to procreation, has no business discriminating against the love of homosexuals.

But if we just accept this shift, we’re giving up on one of the great ideas of Western civilization: the celebration of lifelong heterosexual monogamy as a unique and indispensable estate. That ideal is still worth honoring, and still worth striving to preserve. And preserving it ultimately requires some public acknowledgment that heterosexual unions and gay relationships are different: similar in emotional commitment, but distinct both in their challenges and their potential fruit.

But based on Judge Walker’s logic — which suggests that any such distinction is bigoted and un-American — I don’t think a society that declares gay marriage to be a fundamental right will be capable of even entertaining this idea.


Me:

Douthat starts off okay but then gets circular:

...This ideal holds up the commitment to lifelong fidelity and support by two sexually different human beings — a commitment that involves the mutual surrender, arguably, of their reproductive self-interest — as a uniquely admirable kind of relationship. It holds up the domestic life that can be created only by such unions, in which children grow up in intimate contact with both of their biological parents, as a uniquely admirable approach to child-rearing. And recognizing the difficulty of achieving these goals, it surrounds wedlock with a distinctive set of rituals, sanctions and taboos....

Note the presumed "two sexually different Human beings"

And then he gets pernicious and hysterical:

...Or at least, it was the Western understanding. Lately, it has come to co-exist with a less idealistic, more accommodating approach, defined by no-fault divorce, frequent out-of-wedlock births, and serial monogamy.

In this landscape, gay-marriage critics who fret about a slippery slope to polygamy miss the point. Americans already have a kind of postmodern polygamy available to them. It’s just spread over the course of a lifetime, rather than concentrated in a “Big Love”-style menage.

If this newer order completely vanquishes the older marital ideal, then gay marriage will become not only acceptable but morally necessary....

It's another version of his two Americas cited in the debate over the Muslim Community Centre. One pudding to eat in reproof of this hysteria is that gays will be as offended by loose, degenerate, irresponsible sexuality--such as that might be-- as will straights.


Me:

p.s.

...No default divorce...

The perfect door through which to walk to get into Douthat's room of nonsense on this issue.


Jacko:

I just don't see where Douthat is being or saying all of the terrible things you accuse him of. I could be wrong. Wouldn't be the first time. Still I stand as before. It seems to me that he fairly articulated the primary of what is at stake in redefinition of marriage. He also suggests that for practical purpose it has been redefined by a good many participants in the endeavor. He asks " Do we throw out the baby with our 'enlightened bath water?" Reasonable question by my lights.



Me:

Jacko, as I read him--and I will bow to no man in my capacity to be wrong-- he's proposing one America rooted in in what he calls his ideal vision of marriage--heterosexual, life long and child nurturing as against another America sliding into polygamiztion. As I before quoted, but repeat:

...Lately, it has come to co-exist with a less idealistic, more accommodating approach, defined by no-fault divorce, frequent out-of-wedlock births, and serial monogamy.

In this landscape, gay-marriage critics who fret about a slippery slope to polygamy miss the point. Americans already have a kind of postmodern polygamy available to them ...

In this landscape, gay-marriage critics who fret about a slippery slope to polygamy miss the point. Americans already have a kind of postmodern polygamy available to them. It’s just spread over the course of a lifetime, rather than concentrated in a “Big Love”-style menage.

If this newer order completely vanquishes the older marital ideal, then gay marriage will become not only acceptable but morally necessary...

I paraphrase this to mean that gay marriage is of a piece with a terribly dysfunctional America marked in an important part by sexual irresponsibility as shown in things like no fault divorce, kids born out of wedlock and and lots of sexual relationships. When that dysfunctional America prevails, gay marriage, because it's inseparable from the dysfunction, will be a moral imperative. I.E. once ideal standards are gone, what ground can possibly be put against gay marriage.

This is circular because its conclusion is its premise: gay marriage is a lesser form of institution that sullies the ideal, without a case made out for that or for the ideal being the ideal. And it's pernicious because it ascribes to gay marriage, just by an implicitly hysterical, mere say so, a role in America's moral decline as Douthat sees it.

jacko:

It seems to me that you are front loading his implications of 'dysfunction' with the assumption that perversity is the mover of his objections. I would contend that the origins of his concern would be misguided narcissism across the spectrum of relationship dispositions. In other words he asks the question, " Is there something important and distinctively worthy of the loyalty and implied commitment to a union that sanctifies progeny?" " Is there a valuable psychological/spiritual construct at risk by diluting the Judeo/Christian embrace of nuclear heterosexual monogamy and the multi-directional consequences of the Individual thus constituted?"

Very good questions that should not be dismissed with insouciant and accusatory contempt. We are trying to define Love and all of its implications.

Me:

Well Douthat uses the word polygamy. But I'll grant you your well taken point about my front (over) loading "dysfunction" and say I can make the same case with your notion of “misguided narcissism”.

I don’t think Douthat’s asking the questions you’re saying he’s asking. I think, rather, he’s answering them by saying, I paraphrase, in relation to your formulation of his questions, “Yes there’s something important, and yes it’s at risk and gay marriage is part of that risk.”

There’s obviously something important and worthy in an enduring and loving and committed relationship which puts its children first. But that question answers itself affirmatively and that question and that answer, contra Douthat, have nothing to do with gay relationships and gay marriage. The evidence: gay relationships, marriages, themselves which are stable, loving and permanent, and some of which have children.

And where does gay marriage come to be a “dilution”? That trope—dilution, lessening by addition—has you buying into Douthat’s circularity: making your premise your conclusion. What has the deep, loving and, say, life long commitment of two same sex partners, with or without children, who are by their natures, whether or not made by a God, drawn to their own sex, have to do with the "dilution" of marriage?

I need to see that case made out.

BTW, the more I talk about this here, the more troubled I get by Obama's opposition to same sex marriage owing to his faith, which was part of the original post heading this thread.