I am not even the slightest bit surprised to learn from David Axelrod that candidate Barack Obama dissembled about his reluctance to acknowledge same-sex marriages. I suppose some people will hold this against him not because they agree or disagree with his stated positions, but because they are disappointed that he lied to them about where he stood. I don’t hold it against him at all.
He had the correct position way before most people did, going back to the mid-1990’s.
As a state senate candidate in 1996, Obama filled out a questionnaire saying “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.” But 12 years later as a candidate for president, Obama told Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church that marriage could only extend to heterosexual couples. “I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman,” Obama said at the time. “Now, for me as a Christian — for me — for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.”
He listened to his political people who told him that he was too forward on his skis on the issue, and so he waited until the time was right. In general, I want politicians to be honest and forthright in their positions, but I also want candidates who know what the hell they are doing and can get the job done with the least political cost and risk.
Looking back, nothing was lost because the president took his time. In the end, Obama’s presidency is going to be remembered as the watershed moment for gay rights and gay marriage, and it sounds like the Supreme Court is going to ratify the president’s judgment soon and remove this from the arena of controversy.
How can I be so petty as to nitpick that performance and that result?
