Please get out of the new one if you can’t lend your hand, Mr. President:
Jake Tapper: Does the President or the White House have a
reaction to the Governor of Maine signing a
same-sex marriage bill?
Robert Gibbs: No,
I think the President’s position on same-sex marriages
has been talked about and discussed.
Tapper: He opposes same-sex marriage.
Gibbs: He
supports civil unions.
Tapper: Does that mean that he’s going to say or do
anything against what the citizens of Maine —
Gibbs: Not that
I’m aware of. I think the President believes this is an
issue that’s best addressed by the states.
Look. I’m sure there are plenty of nervous people in the White House who don’t want Obama to invite the gay marrieds to his parties but I also think it’s about freaking time they got told to shut up and sit down. In case nobody’s noticed the religious right and the Republicans have lost this culture war, and it’s over, and even if that wasn’t the case being publicly in favor of civil rights for all is kind of, you know, the right thing to do. So drop this nonsense and just get on with it, so that you don’t have to spend the rest of your life making up excuses and mouthing crap about political expediency and justifying your chickenassitude to everyone.
A.
Exactly – Mr. President (and your staff) – YOU WON, You are NO longer campaigning – it’s MORE than okay and WAY past time to accept legal MARRIAGE for all consenting adults! Jeeze, it’s not hard. There are actual problems out there – worrying about being disliked ’cause you are okay if Jenny and Cindy wed…??? Really? Let ’em marry already – and get back to the economy, health care, environment, energy…
As for myself, I would just like a decent dude to date.
Elspeth
Consider a contrary point of view — it IS a state matter, Obama’s got a lot on his plate, and things seem to be falling to place relatively rapidly by themselves. Remember, I live in MA, and plenty of us thought that it sure would have been a happy accident if our court could have waited till after the 2004 presidential election to make all our marriages gay.
There’s also the issue that when he ran, his position was civil unions, and he’s doing an excellent job at totally freaking out the right by doing all the things he said he would do if he were elected.
Or to put this differently, quit worrying about symbolic stuff, and look at the results. We’re getting there, and don’t tell me you had any idea, back before the MA decision, that we would be this far along in 2009.
I see your point, dr2chase, and I agree to a certain extent. But it’s your last point that is, I think, the most important. There seems to be steam building behind this, and if the president were to get out there and push this now, even subtly, I think it would add to that.
And I’d much rather see him out in front on this than trailing behind.
Y’all know he’s a politician, right? Y’all watched West Wing back when we had President Jeb Bartlett(Martin Sheen) to look up to (as opposed to presidon’t w romeo charlie foxtrot to look away from), right?
Sometimes the man’s got to let things develop while he’s busy on another front. At the level he’s working now, most guys would be looking for an issue on which they could tread water and breathe (or to use a basketball metaphor, lope down the court and rest their legs on a couple possessions).
Don’t misunderstand me. I don’t know where this “state matter” language originated. I haven’t read Little Scottie McClellan’s book (yet; damn thing’s remaindered at B&N now, so maybe I ought to check & see if it’s back in at the library, but there’s books on gardening and Chinese cooking and birdwatching in the Chihuahuan Desert ahead of it on my list, not to mention small engine repair and the care and feeding of a wildscape yard side-by-side with a victory garden) so I don’t know how much of this sort of stuff a WH press officer can/should/ will ad lib.
I do think the President looked up and saw that Progress is going on and It Is Good, and thought maybe this was one place he didn’t yet need to stick in an oar (what with Chrysler bankrupt, GM imploding, the swine fracking flu, Pakistan and the Taliban, and not being able to get out of Iraq as fast as he wants for reasons we’re still not clear on, not to mention the torture the previous administration needs to not get away with, the economy being in the toilet, health care reform turning into a huge stinker of an issue, and all the other junk on his plate right now).
There is such a thing as going, “You know, if I miss the timing on this I’ll screw it up. I think I should let it eat.”
does he have to divorce michelle and marry a dude? if not, why is this even a question?
Gibbs: He supports civil unions
So, in other words, Obama is for second-class citizenship for gay married couples then. Nice.
I voted for the dude because there was no other viable option, but he’s just a typical pandering politico. Civil unions do NOT in any way, shape or form = marriage with the icky gay part because some breeders can know each other two weeks, get drunk, get on a plane to Vegas, go to the Elvis Chapel and get married (sorry, Friends plot much?) and they would have more rights and benefits than a gay couple in civil unions who have been together for 30 years. Hospitals could still deny them visitation rights because “only married spouses can visit” and so on.
Civil unions is NOT acceptable, Obama, so STFU and do the right thing for once and actually LEAD instead of parsing the politics of a situation until its dead.