President Barack Obama's wobbly gay
marriage stance is slammed in a just-published
The
New Republic
op-ed.
The editorial, written by executive
editor Richard Just, takes aim at Obama for his lukewarm support of
the institution.
Just begins with some historical
context, comparing President Woodrow Wilson's halfhearted support for
women's suffrage to Obama's lackluster record on gay marriage.
Wilson dodged the issue by insisting
that it was “not a question that is dealt with by the national
government at all.”
“An evasive stance on a controversial
civil rights issue from a liberal president; an insistence that the
issue is primarily local, rather than national, in character; a
complete failure of sincerity, nerve, and will: If these things sound
familiar in 2010, it is because Barack Obama is taking exactly the
same approach on gay marriage,” Just writes.
Obama has wrapped himself around the
issue like a pretzel. He's gone from endorsing the legalization of
gay marriage in 1996 to opposing “mean spirited” constitutional
efforts to ban it.
“What the timeline shows is a pattern
that can only be described as illogical and cynical.”
“Obama appears to be saying that it
is fine to prohibit gay people from getting married, as long as the
vehicle for doing so is not a constitution.”
Just calls Obama's reasoning for
supporting civil unions for gay couples over marriage nonsensical.
“Obama has also said he favors civil
unions rather than gay marriage because the question of where and how
to apply the label 'marriage' is a religious one. This argument
makes even less sense than his stance on state constitutions, since
marriage, for better or for worse, is very much a government matter.”
In the end, Just returns to Wilson, who
eventually endorsed the nineteenth amendment, arguing that Obama
should take heed of his predecessor’s stumble on women's suffrage.
“[H]istory does not look kindly on
this type of presidential conduct. Wilson is today remembered as a
near-great president, but his indifference on questions of gender and
race is more than a bit unflattering in retrospect.”
“[O]bama's stance seems to be a way
of conveying to the country that he knows a lot of people still
aren't completely comfortable admitting gays and lesbians as full
participants in American life, and that this is OK because he isn't
either. It is about the most cynical gesture you can imagine from an
allegedly liberal leader – and we deserve better. I am speaking to
you as an American, Mr. Obama.”