Given the recent controversy over whether or not Barack Obama signed a 1996 statement in support of gay marriage back when he was a candidate for the State Senate in Illinois, I truthfully don't know what to believe about what Obama really thinks. I do know that he's a slick politician - far slippery than many of us realized back in 2008 - and part of me fears that he will "believe" whatever is deemed most expedient at any particular time. Yes, he's better than a member of the GOP controlled by the Christan Taliban would be on LGBT issues. But it still would be nice to be able to believe that Obama might actually give a damn about individuals like the boyfriend and me and similar same sex couples. A piece in the New York Times looks at Obama's alleged "evolving" views on gay marriage. Here are some highlights - draw your own conclusions:*
WASHINGTON — Driving across the flatlands of Illinois with Barack Obama during the Senate race of 2004, Kevin Thompson sometimes found himself tutoring the candidate on gay rights. Mr. Thompson, then a traveling aide, recalls long conversations about topics like the 1969 Stonewall Rebellion that sparked the gay rights movement, gay adoption — Mr. Obama once volunteered that Mr. Thompson and his partner would make “great parents,” Mr. Thompson recalled — and same-sex marriage, which Mr. Obama has in the past opposed.
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Mr. Thompson, an Obama supporter, is skeptical about that. “To this day,” he said, “I don’t think Barack Obama has any issue with two people of the same gender getting married.”
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Now President Obama says his views on same-sex marriage are “evolving,” and as he runs for re-election he is seeking support from gay donors who want to know where he stands. This week, he will headline a $1,250-a-plate “Gala with the Gay Community” in Manhattan, his first such event as president; on June 29, he will host a Gay Pride reception at the White House.
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The White House would not comment on whether Mr. Obama was ready to endorse same-sex marriage. But one Democratic strategist close to the White House, speaking only on the condition of anonymity, said some senior advisers “are looking at the tactics of how this might be done if the president chose to do it.”
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Many gay leaders say because the president has a strong record on issues they care about — prodding Congress to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which barred openly gay men and lesbians from serving in the military, and withdrawing legal support for the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman — he is not under intense pressure to announce a change in his position before the 2012 election.
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But with the political climate around gay rights changing drastically — a handful of recent polls show that Americans, by a slim majority, now support same-sex marriage — some strategists see little political cost to a shift in position. And a review of Mr. Obama’s record, dating to when he first ran for public office, suggests that he may have been for same-sex marriage before he was against it.
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In 1996, as a candidate for the State Senate in Illinois, Mr. Obama responded to a questionnaire from a gay newspaper. “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages,” Mr. Obama wrote, “and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.” White House officials have said Mr. Obama was really referring to civil unions, which he does support. (On Friday, Mr. Obama’s communications director, Dan Pfieffer, caused a brief kerfuffle by telling a conference of bloggers that Mr. Obama had not filled out the forms himself; the White House later said he was mistaken.)
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Jimmy Creech, a former Methodist minister who advocates for same-sex marriage, recalls meeting with Mr. Obama’s top Senate aides in 2005. He thought Mr. Obama, the son of an interracial couple whose marriage would have been illegal in some states, would be sympathetic. But he said the conversation turned frosty when same-sex marriage came up. “We talked about this as an expression of bigotry, using religion to justify discrimination,” Mr. Creech said. “They did not like that; the word ‘bigotry’ was inflammatory to them.”
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Three years later, Mr. Obama has said his views are evolving, in part because he has “very close friends who are married gay and lesbian couples.” But the Democrat who had strategy discussions with the White House on same-sex marriage said Mr. Obama seemed to be considering his place in history and was moved by the argument of Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who cast the repeal of “don’t ask, don’t tell” as a moral issue.
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“This is clearly a president who is interested in making big historical changes,” the strategist said. “I think this issue has moved into that context for him.”
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My thoughts? I'm not going to be holding my breath waiting for Obama to get a spine. If he does, I'll be pleasantly surprised.
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