Barack Obama knows how to play gay Democrats like a fiddle.  They’re just so eager to embrace the Democratic Party that one shout out, one wink, one nod is all it takes for them to think he loves them.  They’re so smitten with the captain of the football team that he knows all he needs do to earn their affection is to make it appear that they might have a chance with him.

But, as I wrote nearly a year ago, face it, guys and gals, “he’s just after you for your money.”

Over at the Washington Free Beacon, the staff take note of an interesting coincidence:

President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage less [sic] than 48 hours after the Washington Post reported that prominent political donors were threatening to withhold donations over the president’s position on gay rights. . . .

Left-wing blogger Greg Sargent reported on Monday that “leading gay and progressive donors” were angry with Obama over his increasingly convoluted position on gay rights and same-sex marriage, and were refusing to donate any more money to Priorities USA, the pro-Obama Super PAC.

Emphasis added.  And sure enough, just after he blows a kiss in their direction, gay Democrats are back to swooning.  According to Zeke Miller on BuzzFeed, “in the first 90 minutes after the news broke Wednesday, the campaign received $1 million in spontaneous contributions” (via Joshuapundit).

And all this for a kiss.  And there’s still no ring in sight.  No indication what the president’s change of heart will change in the legislative/policy sphere.

On its website, The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) bills itself as “the official campaign arm of the Democrats in the House.”  And last night via a friend’s Facebook link, I learned that this outfit was garnering signatures in support of the president’s new stand on gay marriage:

That takes some cheek. Since a Republican Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996, Democrats have controlled the House for four years, from January 3, 2007 until January 5, 2011.  Not once did then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) hold a vote on repealing that legislation.  Not once did she hold a vote on giving benefits to the same-sex domestic partners of federal employees.

These Democrats now praise Obama’s support of same-sex marriage, yet, when they had a chance to act on the issue they did nothing.

Something tells me that once the DCCC gets your name, they’re going to be hitting you up for campaign contributions.  Maybe this thing is all about fundraising after all.

At 0:49 below, Audrey Hepburn demonstrates how gay Americans should have responded to President Obama’s statement on gay marriage yesterday:

Like everything with Obama, all we get is “words, words, words.”

This is not just a gay conservative talking.  Several voices on the left have found that there’s not much there there in the president’s sudden shift on same-sex marriage.  At the Gawker, John Cook calls the statement a “cowardly cop-out”:  ”it seems fairly clear from the network’s coverage that his announcement amounts to much less than meets the eye. He now believes that gay couples should be able to marry.”

At the far left magazine Mother Jones, Adam Serwer reports that his colleague . . .

. . . David Corn spoke with an administration source and asked whether the president recognized gay marriage as a right. The official replied, “He has always said that it is a state issue, and he’s not suggesting changing that. He did not support the North Carolina amendment, but he’s not saying he will bring up a piece of federal legislation on gay marriage. This is how he feels himself about the issue, and he leaves it to the states.”

Emphasis added.  He’s not bringing up legislation?!?  And all my left-leaning gay friends on Facebook are so giddy about the statement; Obama’s just leaving it to the states.

Shouldn’t they be insisting that he show us he loves us by putting some political capital on the line and backing legislation to make federal recognition of gay relationships a reality?

He’s like the guy who tells his beloved how much he loves her, tells her wants to get married, but refuses to buy a ring or set a date.

R. Clarke Cooper, Log Cabin Executive Director has not joined the heads of other D.C.-based gay organizations in praising the president for putting forward the same position yesterday as Dick Cheney offered twelve years ago:

Log Cabin Republicans appreciate that President Obama has finally come in line with leaders like Vice President Dick Cheney on this issue, but LGBT Americans are right to be angry that this calculated announcement comes too late to be of any use to the people of North Carolina, or any of the other states that have addressed this issue on his watch. This administration has manipulated LGBT families for political gain as much as anybody, and after his campaign’s ridiculous contortions to deny support for marriage equality this week he does not deserve praise for an announcement that comes a day late and a dollar short.

Some gay leaders see this move for what it is, a “calculated announcement” following “his campaign’s ridiculous contortions.”  Kudos, Clarke for your solid statment. Something’s changed at Log Cabin.  Wonder why that could be.

It doesn’t matter what he does or hasn’t done; it does matter that he likes us.

Judging from my Facebook feed and anecdotal evidence from friends, many gay people today are celebrating their imminent procurement of the Brooklyn Bridge.  Expect them to soon increase their down payment toward that celebrated span.

This swoon, to borrow an expression from Jennifer Rubin, “will take up the political oxygen for a while.”  What exactly will this accomplish save to give gay Democrats, already eager to support Obama, a reason to really ’round the Democrat?  Will Obama do what he didn’t do when his party had majorities in both houses of Congress, work the phones and otherwise buttonhole legislators to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) – as LBJ did in 1964 on behalf of the Civil Rights Act?

Why did he wait until after North Carolina voters passed Amendment One to issue his statement?  Today’s comments, quips Christopher R. Barron, Chief Strategist and Co-Founder of GOProud are ”cold comfort to the gay couples in North Carolina.”  Heck, he didn’t even cut a radio or TV ad opposing the ballot measure.

He even canceled a scheduled visit to the Tarheel State on primary day.

Wonder if this sudden change of heart had something to do with money.  A few weeks ago, Ed Morrissey noted that “Obama remains significantly off of his own 2008 pace of fundraising, and way under the Democratic donation performance of that cycle.”  And as Dan Eggen reports in the Washington Post:

Many of Obama’s key financial supporters are gay–including finance director Rufus Gifford and Democratic National Committee treasurer Andrew Tobias–and the campaign has regularly held fundraisers focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender donors.

A review of Obama’s top bundlers, who have brought in $500,000 or more for the campaign, shows that about one in six publicly identify themselves as gay.

It’s all about the money, friends.

Obama’s self-referential statement included no specifics about what he means to do. It, Philip Klein writes, “has no tangible policy impact — [Obama] still thinks the issue should be left to the states” — pretty much the same position Dick Cheney articulated in the Vice Presidential Debate twelve years ago. And I didn’t hear my gay friends singing hosannas then.

Some gay Democrats just need a token gesture to get all googly-eyed about a Democrat.  And the White House’s waffling words on gay marriage had caused much consternation among his gay supporters.  Simply put, the president moved to quiet a political firestorm in order to raise some much needed campaign cash. (more…)

Perhaps Barack Obama really did “evolve” on gay marriage. But, this poll on Yahoo! (no conservative platform that) suggests that those responding take a more, well, jaundiced view of the Democrat’s sudden change of heart:

As the above shot indicates, I’m one of those who think it was a cynical political decision — and that will be the subject of my next post.

FROM THE FACEBOOK COMMENTS: Chad writes:

Maybe he decided to come out in favor of SSM now because he knows it’s more popular than he is. Back in 2008, he probably had the same position he does now, but he probably thought he was politically better off showing nominal opposition then, and now, he needs to do something to shake things up since his reelection is so tenuous and he needs to make the election be something other than the economy.

Emphasis added. Heh.

Obama in 2004: ‘I Don’t Think Marriage Is a Civil Right’

OBAMA: “No. I think there are a whole host of things that are civil rights, and then there are other things–such as traditional marriage–that, I think, express a community’s concern and regard for a particular institution.”

Q: “So, marriage is not a civil right, as far as you’re concerned.”

OBAMA: “I don’t think marriage is a civil right, but I think that being able…”

Q: “Is it a human right?” 

OBAMA: “But I think that being able to transfer property is a civil right. I think not being…” 

Q: “Do you think marriage is a human right?”

OBAMA: “I think that not being able to, not being discriminated against is a civil right. I think making sure that we don’t engage in the sort of gay-bashing that, I think, has unfortunately dominated this campaign–not just here in Illinois, but across the country–I think, is unfortunate, and I think that that kind of mean-spirited attacks on homosexuals is something that the people of Illinois generally have rejected.”

Wow… quite the “Constitutional Scholar” that Obama is, eh?

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

BREAKING FROM ABC NEWS:

President Obama today announced that he now supports same-sex marriage, reversing his longstanding opposition amid growing pressure from the Democratic base and even his own vice president.

In an interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts, the president described his thought process as an “evolution” that led him to this place, based on conversations with his own staff members, openly gay and lesbian service members, and conversations with his wife and own daughters.

As I said on Twitter a few minutes ago…

First Obama co-opts the Bush policies in the War on Terror and now he co-opts Dick Cheney’s position on gay marriage.  Progress!

I bet his supporters fighting for months to defeat Amendment One in North Carolina are real impressed that he let them hang out to dry until after the vote.  Charming.

Now you may all discuss…

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

UPDATE (from Dan): This headline may help explain things, Gay Money In This Election Has Replaced Wall Street Money.

UP-UPDATE (also from Dan):  This is a cynical move from a position of political weakness.  Will elaborate later today as time allows.

North Carolina voters yesterday overwhelmingly approved Amendment One, so adding a provision to the state’s constitution to ban state recognition of same-sex marriages — and even civil unions.  Winning over 60% of the vote, the measure passed in all but seven of the state’s 100 counties, failing only in the Raleigh-Durham area, Charlotte (Mecklenburg County), Asheville (Buncombe County) and Watauga County:

According to FoxNews, “church leaders urged Sunday congregations to vote for the amendment. The Rev. Billy Graham, who at 93 remains influential even though his last crusade was in 2005, was featured in full-page newspaper ads supporting the amendment.”  The church-going population of the Tarheel State seemed thus instrumental in the amendment’s passage.

At least in North Carolina, Americans still define marriage in traditional terms, as the union of one man and one woman.

Interestingly, “more than 500,000 voters had cast their ballot before Tuesday, which was more than the 2008 primary when Obama and Hillary Clinton were fighting for the Democratic presidential nomination.”  And given that the contest for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination was more hotly contested than than for the Republican, a greater proportion of Democrats may well have showed up at the polls yesterday.

Given the high proportional of evangelicals in the state (North Carolina ranks 7th nationally in church attendance), perhaps opponents had little prayer of defeating the measure.  Opponents did seem to have done a better job of reaching out beyond the traditional Democratic interest groups than did their counterparts in California four years ago (but then I write from California not having witnessed the campaign up close).

Demographics apparently worked against amendment opponents.

National opinion polls notwithstanding, while Americans have become increasingly accepting of homosexuality in our culture, all too many are not yet ready to expand the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples.

FROM THE COMMENTS: Kristie takes issue with my title:

I wouldn’t say North Carolinians “overwhelmingly approved Amendment One” considering the fact that out of the 6,296,759 registered voters in the state of NC 4,132,865 of them did not cast a ballot at all. (more…)

Yesterday, when I announced my determination to slow down the pace of blogging this week, I had intended to post only a handful of pieces on gay issues, first to indication my opposition to North Carolina’s Amendment One, then to offer a followup on the Grenell Matter, noting how that latter showed not the anti-gay animus that some Democratic partisans and gay activists were determined to find in the GOP, but the party’s own awkwardness on gay issues (for more on that, just read the passage I quoted in this post from the Huffington Post‘s Jon Ward).

Where the presumptive Republican nominee has handled social conservative concerns about a gay staffer in a most awkward manner, his Democratic counterpart has shown incredible “cowardice,” as one blogger put it, in handling the issue of gay marriage.  Bruce blogged that Obama “stepped in it.”  Others have been even less forgiving.

The real problem is that Obama didn’t try to find some sort of compromise in the first two years of his term when he had overwhelming Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress.  Had he had some significant political savvy, he might, for example, have sat down with gay leaders and pointed to the passage of Prop 8 in California, saying that it wouldn’t be prudent to push forward on gay marriage per se, but would instead focus on civil unions (touting such legislation as the Domestic Partnership Benefits and Obligations Act (H.R. 2517), a bill in the 111th Congress “which would grant domestic partners access to federal employee health care benefits“); he would have been wise to ask these leaders to identify key Republicans (e.g. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen in the House and Susan Collins in the Senate) who would be willing to help spearhead such efforts.

The Democrat would then be able to point to efforts (likely successful) he had made to advance the cause of same-sex couples.  There might not be a public outcry over gay marriage had he had accomplished something in terms of federal recognition of same-sex civil unions, even if just for government employees. (more…)

Looks like I picked the wrong week for slow blogging:

UPDATE/EXPLANATION: As per the second post linked above, I had intended to blog at a slower pace this week than usual, but when I caught Jennifer Rubin’s post, I began to realize that the administration’s stance on gay marriage would come to dominate this week’s news cycle — much as the Grenell matter had dominated last week’s.

Indeed, this morning on Facebook, no fewer than five people had linked posts on the administration’s “cowardice“, as one conservative blogger put it, in the gay marriage debate — not to mention the posts I would chance upon the various conservative blogs I tend to scan every day.

As other blogs address this topic, it seems a gay conservative website should be on top of the issue.

At least since Edmund Burke, whom many consider the forerunner of modern conservatism, conservatives believes we must consider the circumstances of any given situation before developing a law, should the circumstances require one, to remedy it.  Burkean conservatives avoid one-size=fits=all solutions and recognize that some laws should change as times change, while others stay the same.  Some strictures remain as valid today as they were in the ancient world, others outdated, belonging quite literally to another era.

“Circumstances,” Burke wrote, “give in reality to every political principle its distinguishing color and discriminating effect.”

A conservative doesn’t change for change’s sake, but he doesn’t impede a change when circumstances require one.  North Carolina’s Amendment One which is today before the voters of the Tarheel State would prevent the state’s General Assembly, its elected legislature, from crafting laws to reflect the changing circumstances of gays and lesbians in that state.

Its defeat would not lead directly to state recognition of same-sex marriage in North Carolina nor even to state recognition of same-sex civil unions, but merely leave both options — and others as well — open to future legislatures.  And bear in mind that every member of those legislatures will be subject to popular election.  All a vote against Amendment One does is keep the issue of same-sex unions open to the elected representatives of North Carolina’s citizens.  Its defeat will not require churches to perform gay weddings.

I urge North Carolina conservatives to hold true to long-standing conservative principles and to vote today against Amendment One.

Let me begin by reminding you of some important facts.  Democrat Barack Obama was elected president in November 2008, with strong support from gay groups, including many supporting state recognition of same-sex marriage.

When he took office, the president’s party, the Democratic, enjoyed overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress.  From July 7, 2009 until February 4, 2010, that majority was filibuster-proof, that is, Senate Democrats didn’t need a single Republican vote to invoke cloture; they could vote on any item they wanted to.  Said legislative Democrats never voted to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act or even to pass a federal civil unions bill.  They only got their act together to vote on repealing Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell (DADT) after the election, but before the swearing in, of a Republican Congress in November 2010.

In short, Democrats in the 111th Congress had the chance to act on issues of concern to gay Americans, but failed to do so.

Now to the question.  Earlier today, Jennifer Rubin asked, “Are gay-marriage advocates being taken as fools?”

On “Meet the Press,” Vice President Joe Biden said he’d be “comfortable with gay marriage,” an odd formulation for an important matter of public policy. (This is truly liberalism’s triumph of good intentions over actions.)

. . .

This is becoming the proverbial Lucy and the football. One wonders how often pro-gay-marriage activists, like poor Charlie Brown, are going to fall for this stuff.

. . . .

First, forking over lots of money gives you access; threatening to cut it off gets you attention. The leverage is with the gay community, whose financial and electoral power is considerable. But as long as the campaign takes gay voters (like Jews, Hispanics and union members) for granted, there is no reason for President Obama to move on this before the election.

Maybe had HRC not been so quick to endorse Obama, they might have been able to extract some concessions from the Democrat.  It seems though that the heads of that and other gay groups would rather be loved by the Democrats than see legislation passed recognizing our relationships.

UPDATE:  Deborah Kerr reminds us (@ 2:35 below) how HRC treats Obama: (more…)

If I lived in North Carolina, I’d be preparing to vote, “No,” tomorrow on Amendment One. The ballot proposition would not just enshrine the traditional definition of marriage into the Tar Heel State’s constitution, it also “would ban any other type of ‘domestic legal union’ such as civil unions and domestic partnerships.”  Draconian though the amendment is, it does leave some wiggle room to same-sex couples with this language:

This section does not prohibit a private party from entering into contracts with another private party; nor does this section prohibit courts from adjudicating the rights of private parties pursuant to such contracts.

That said, I believe voters should defeat this amendment. It prevents the state’s elected legislature from responding to changing social conditions.

Defeat of the amendment would not lead to state recognition of same-sex marriages — or even same-sex civil unions.  North Carolina would continue to recognize as marriages only unions between one man and one woman.  That definition would just not be part of its constitution; future legislatures (and even the current one) would simply remain free to consider means to provide benefits to same-sex couples.

From what I have read, largely through Pam Spaulding‘s Facebook links, it seems that opponents of Amendment One, have done a far better job than those opposing California’s Prop 8 of enlisting business groups in the campaign against the ballot measure. The Chapel Hill-Carrboro Chamber of Commerce, for example, released this statement last month:

North Carolina’s proposed Amendment 1 is bad for business. It will interfere with employer’s ability to recruit talent and their right to provide competitive benefits to their employees. It also signals to employers and employees that North Carolina is not welcoming to the diverse, creative workforce that we need to compete in the global economy. We should not do anything that diminishes any corporation’s interest in locating or remaining in North Carolina.

Exactly.  A Bank of America executive (B of A is based in Charlotte) feared the amendment, if passed, would have a “disastrous effect“: (more…)

Glenn Reynolds reports, “BIDEN UNLEASHED: Goes against Obama and endorses gay marriage, Axelrod quick to back-pedal, hilarity ensues.”

RELATED:  Charlie Spiering contends that “Yes. Biden was off-script on gay marriage comments“.

I expect to have more to say about Rick Santorum’s withdrawal next week, particularly as it impacts the role of gay Republicans in the GOP — and the party’s emerging attitude toward gays.  I had begun that discussion this post.  As part of that conversation, I highly recommend Alana Goodman’s Commentary post about the GOP Shift on Gay Marriage Opposition.  Goodman considers an issue I’d been meaning to address about the National Organization for Marriage (yes, rusty, that’s the post I indicated here that intended to write) which helps show one trend I’d been meaning to consider.

Alas, that by the time I (expect to) get to this post, the (Santorum) story may no longer be fresh, but other obligations take precedence.  The day Santorum dropped out, I was flying to New York (moving a planned trip up a day early for family reasons) and will be “back east” (as we in California call this part of the country) until early next week, with meetings in western Massachusetts (the reason for the trip) in the coming days.

That said, I do want to share with you something blogger Ed Morrissey, who had back Santorum “with some heavy qualifications” said about Romney wrapping up the nomination:

Mitt Romney is the nominee.  He won the nomination through hard work and good organization, but his competition forced him to improve his performance along the way.  The sooner we put fantasies of brokered conventions and one-on-one debates between Republicans — which will only serve as media fodder to attack the GOP — the better we will begin to prepare for the real goal of this process, which is to make Barack Obama a one-term President.  With that goal in mind, I plan to caucus for Romney in the upcoming CD and state Republican conventions in Minnesota and work to unite the party behind its nominee.  However, I also plan to support candidates in the House and Senate that will ensure that a President Romney governs as a conservative, as Donald Devine advises post-Santorum.

I share this because Morrissey, as usual, offers a good summary of the situation and often seems to have his finger on the pulse of conservative sentiment.
(more…)

On Thursday, Tina Korbe helped lay the ground work for  series of posts as I have been planning on gays, the GOP and the current presidential election.  In a post where she took issue with former Democratic National Committee Chair Howard Dean’s mean-spirited anti-Republican rant, which I excerpted and linked here, she articulated a preference for the Republican appeal to the “whole person” over the Democrats’ pandering to the differences which divide us.

And so it is, in some ways, for gay Republicans.  We may not like that our party has yet to embrace even state recognition of same-sex civil unions, but we are put off by the Democrats’ patronizing approach.  We recognize that there are larger issues at stake than same-sex unions, particularly a president unwilling to address a federal debt than has increased by a greater amount in the past three years and two months than it had in the preceding eight.

Now, expect to hear increasingly harsh rhetoric attacking the GOP not just for the Democrat-declared war on women, but also for its hostility to people like us who differ from the societal norm.  Democrats aren’t doing this just to keep gays voting Democratic, but they’re also seeking to appeal to straight suburban voters who have gay friends — or who are just uncomfortable with anti-gay rhetoric; such suburban voters may not be pro-gay per se, but do tend to be anti-anti-gay.

I endorsed Jon Huntsman for President in part because of his, as I put it three months ago, “solid statement on civil unions” in the ABC News /Yahoo!/WMUR-TV New Hampshire Republican primary debate.  Although he thought marriage should be “saved for one man and one woman,” he also advocated “reciprocal beneficiary rights [as] part of civil unions”, encouraging states “to talk about this.”

His answer was much better than that of Mitt Romney, now the likely Republican nominee.  Still, that former Massachusetts governor did offer a most decent reply which, for the purpose of this post and my intended series, I quote in full.  He recognizes the capacity of gay people to form loving and lasting couples and even parent children.  He shows no animus against people like us.  He, like the man he seeks to replace, just believes marriage to be a union between individuals of different sexes.

In response to Diane Sawyer’s question how he would respond to a gay couple sitting down in his living room and asking about the right “to form loving, committed, long-term relationships”, he began by praising couples:

Well, the answer is, is that’s a wonderful thing to do, and that there’s every right for people in this country to form long- term committed relationships with one another. That doesn’t mean that they have to call it marriage or they have to receive the — the approval of the state and a marriage license and so forth for that to occur. (more…)

Liz Mair reminded us yesterday of something significant about the New Hampshire House’s rejections of “a bill that would have made their state legislature the first one to repeal” the state’s decision to recognize same-same unions as marriage: the legislature that rejected repeal was overwhelmingly Republican.

Now, to be sure, the GOP leadership did push repeal, but the rank and file did not entirely fall into line. This is pretty significant considering how small the districts are in the Granite State; most representatives know their constituents. They’ll have to deal with them directly when the legislature is not in session (and even when it is). Thus this vote is considerably more significant than a vote in a larger state where legislators contact with their constituents is often filtered through their staff and special interests.

In Liz’s view,

New Hampshire Republicans who voted against repealing gay marriage made the right call. Gay marriage doesn’t represent a threat to any individual liberties so long as robust conscience protections are in place, whereas the repeal of it would undermine a prior expansion of individual liberties (even if civil unions were permitted).

Many on the gay slur Republicans as haters for opposing state recognition of same-sex marriage.  Guess that means that a Democratic president who opposes inclusion of a plank favoring such recognition in his party’s platform is also a “hater”:

In the past month, almost half of all Democratic senators, several of Obama’s national campaign co-chairs, the House Minority Leader and the chairman of the Democratic convention, among others, have said they support adding marriage equality to the platform. Were this the position that the president held, such proclamations would not be a problem. But Obama says he is still publicly “evolving” on marriage equality. And the wave of support to make it a component of his convention has both surprised aides and set off a private push to keep emotions and expectations in check.

Interviews with more than a dozen party officials and activists reveal that despitewidespread and growing support for marriage equality among Americans, the issue is still viewed as politically sensitive in the top ranks of the Democratic Party. While many high-profile figures have publicly advocated for including strong language in the platform, the Obama campaign and the allied Democratic National Committee are searching for ways to split the difference: showing support for equality but stopping short of a full-fledged endorsement.

“What would it take,” Allahpundit wonders, for Obama to back gay marriage “before the election“?

Well, for starters, he’d need to be worried about the youth vote. This is an issue that could get them to perk up if it looks like turnout is sagging; the question is whether it’ll cost him more votes in older demographics, where turnout is almost always higher, than it’ll earn him in younger ones. (more…)