{"id":16058,"date":"2008-07-01T12:47:26","date_gmt":"2008-07-01T16:47:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/16058.html"},"modified":"2008-07-01T12:47:26","modified_gmt":"2008-07-01T16:47:26","slug":"obama-takes-a-stand-against-gay-marriage-ban","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/obama-takes-a-stand-against-gay-marriage-ban\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama takes a stand against gay-marriage ban"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s been plenty of speculation of late about whether Barack Obama is “moving to the middle,” and rejecting some of his progressive persona. Some of the arguments strike me as more persuasive than others.<\/p>\n

On FISA, for example, I think Obama’s wrong and making a mistake accepting the so-called “compromise.” He disagreed with the Supreme Court ruling on executing child rapists, but that doesn’t actually strike me as a shift to the middle, since he’d taken the same position in his book, written several years ago. Obama announced his support for a kind of faith-based initiative, but as we talked about earlier<\/a>, he’s committed to a policy consistent with church-state separation.<\/p>\n

That said, the perception of a candidate moving hard to the center is taking root, and if I were advising the campaign, I’d encourage Obama to consider a new liberal position or two, before the base becomes entirely deflated.<\/p>\n

This was a start<\/a>…<\/p>\n

It helped launch the last Democratic president and has pushed and prodded every Democratic candidate since Bill Clinton to adopt its centrist positions on issues from budget discipline to welfare.<\/p>\n

But when the Democratic Leadership Council met over the weekend in the shadow of Barack Obama’s Chicago headquarters, he didn’t bother to stop by.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…but snubbing the DLC isn’t the same as an actual progressive policy position. This is better<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who previously said the issue of gay marriage should be left up to each state, has announced his opposition to a California ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriages.<\/p>\n

In a letter to the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club read Sunday at the group’s annual Pride Breakfast in San Francisco, the Illinois senator said he supports extending “fully equal rights and benefits to same-sex couples under both state and federal law.”<\/p>\n

“And that is why I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states,” Obama wrote.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve seen some conservatives suggest this is a flip-flop. It’s not — Obama said he supports states making their own decisions, and in this case, he’d like to see Californians make the superior decision.
\n
\nThis may seem routine — of course<\/i> Obama opposes an anti-gay measure like this one — but James Kirchick raises a good point<\/a>: the Kerry\/Edwards ticket wasn’t willing to go this far four years ago.<\/p>\n

Barack Obama is a better candidate than his predecessor John Kerry in at least one important sense: he opposes a state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, namely, in California. Over the weekend, Obama released a letter saying: “I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states.”<\/p>\n

That’s quite a departure from the position Kerry and his runningmate, John Edwards, took in 2004. Indeed, the two couldn’t find an anti-gay marriage amendment that they didn’t support, swooping into states and urging Democrats to vote against civic equality. Kerry went so far as to endorse the effort in his home state of Massachusetts to reverse a 2003 state supreme court ruling mandating gay marriage, putting him in the unique position of supporting the repeal — and not just denial — of rights for gay couples. With John McCain now supporting the California amendment, he too earns that dubious honor. <\/p>\n

In many ways, Barack Obama is just another politician. Here’s an exception.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Good for him.<\/p>\n

I’d add, by the way, that John McCain, who is so conservative on gay rights that he’s even opposed civil unions, supports the ballot measure, and wants to see gay marriage banned in California and other states.<\/p>\n

Predictable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s been plenty of speculation of late about whether Barack Obama is “moving to the middle,” and rejecting some of his progressive persona. Some of the arguments strike me as more persuasive than others. On FISA, for example, I think Obama’s wrong and making a mistake accepting the so-called “compromise.” He disagreed with the Supreme […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}