WASHINGTON — Before President Obama left the White House on Tuesday morning to fly to an event in Albany, several aides intercepted him in the Oval Office. Within minutes it was decided: the president would endorse same-sex marriage on Wednesday, completing a wrenching personal transformation on the issue.
As described by several aides, that quick decision and his subsequent announcement in a hastily scheduled network television interview were thrust on the White House by 48 hours of frenzied will-he-or-won’t-he speculation after Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. all but forced the president’s hand by embracing the idea of same-sex unions in a Sunday talk show interview.
Advisers say now that Mr. Obama had intended since early this year to define his position sometime before Democrats nominate him for re-election in September. Yet many of the president’s allies believed he would not do so, trusting instead in his strong support from gay voters for having ended a ban on openly gay people in the military and disavowing a federal law defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
Such caution was understandable, the allies said, given the unpredictable fallout the president would face by taking a clear stand on one of the most contentious and politically charged social issues of the day, before what is likely to be a close election. Mr. Obama’s closest advisers say only the timing was in question. Mr. Biden’s unexpected remarks undoubtedly accelerated the timetable.
Initially Mr. Obama and his aides expected that the moment would be Monday, when the president was scheduled to be on “The View,” the ABC daytime talk show, which is popular with women. Certainly, they thought, he would be asked his position on same-sex marriage by one of the show’s hosts, who include Barbara Walters and Whoopi Goldberg.
Yet the pressure had become too great to wait until then, his aides told him; on Monday, the White House press secretary, Jay Carney, was pummeled with questions from skeptical reporters about Mr. Obama’s stance. After the Tuesday morning meeting, Dan Pfeiffer, the president’s communications director, contacted ABC and offered a wide-ranging interview with the president for the following day.
And so it was that Mr. Obama on Wednesday afternoon sat down in the White House with ABC’s Robin Roberts and made news, after nearly two years of saying that his views on same-sex marriage were “evolving.”
“At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Mr. Obama said.
Long a proponent of civil unions, Mr. Obama said his views had changed in part because of prodding by friends who are gay and by conversations with his wife and daughters.
“I had hesitated on gay marriage in part because I thought that civil unions would be sufficient,” Mr. Obama said. “I was sensitive to the fact that for a lot of people, the word marriage was something that invokes very powerful traditions and religious beliefs.”
Mr. Obama also invoked his Christian faith in explaining his decision.
“The thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the golden rule — you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated,” he said. “And I think that’s what we try to impart to our kids, and that’s what motivates me as president.”
Reaction to Mr. Obama’s announcement was largely predictable — including immediate opposition from his presumptive Republican rival, Mitt Romney — yet people on both sides of the issue pointed to the historical significance of a president endorsing marriage between people of the same sex. It was a Democrat, Bill Clinton, who signed the Defense of Marriage Act, defining marriage as between a man and a woman, which the Obama administration last year decided not to enforce in the courts.
While Mr. Obama’s announcement was significant from a symbolic standpoint, more important as a practical matter were Mr. Obama’s decision not to enforce the marriage act and his successful push in 2010 to repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law that prohibited openly gay men and lesbians from serving in the military. For that reason, gay rights groups had been largely enthusiastic about his re-election campaign while being pragmatically resigned to his not publicly supporting same-sex marriage before the election.
Mr. Obama’s announcement has little substantive impact — as an aide said, “It’s not like we’re trying to pass legislation.”
But the political impact is a wild card, even Obama advisers acknowledged, and it came one day after voters in North Carolina — the site of the Democratic Party’s nominating convention — supported a ban on same-sex marriage. But while the president has now injected a volatile social issue into the campaign debate, both sides say the election still is all but certain to turn on the economy.
Public support for same-sex marriage is growing at a pace that surprises even pollsters as older generations of voters who tend to be strongly opposed are supplanted by younger ones who are just as strongly in favor. Same-sex couples are featured in some of the most popular shows on television.
Yet opponents include white working-class voters, among whom Mr. Obama has long had weak support, and many African-Americans, led by influential ministers in their churches, whose support is critical to Mr. Obama in swing states like Virginia and North Carolina. Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Massachusetts, one of the first openly gay members of Congress, said he told the White House months ago that it should not worry about the politics.
“This country is moving, and what’s interesting is every time somebody does something that’s supportive of our rights, it turns out to be (a) popular and (b) not very controversial,” he said in a telephone interview.
Many Americans already assumed Mr. Obama supported same-sex marriage, Mr. Frank said, adding, “Politically, it’s kind of a nonevent.”
Obama strategists had rejected the idea of announcing the president’s support during a fund-raiser or at a speech to a gay rights group, because, as one Democrat close to the White House put it, that would “look like pandering.”
Then last Friday, Mr. Biden taped his interview for NBC’s “Meet the Press,” shown on Sunday morning. Afterward, Mr. Biden’s aides circulated a transcript around the West Wing, with the gay marriage remarks highlighted in yellow. A flurry of e-mails ensued about how Mr. Biden’s office should explain it once the interview was broadcast.
The news media attention escalated on Monday when Mr. Obama’s education secretary, Arne Duncan, acknowledged in a television interview that he also supported same-sex marriage. Editorialists, columnists and bloggers criticized Mr. Obama as appearing calculating by his continued ambivalence.
An administration official, who like others did not want to be named discussing internal White House deliberations, said that until this week, the one certainty was for Mr. Obama to take his stand before September to avoid a convention fight. “It’s not helpful to go down there and have a big conflagration about including this in the platform,” the official said.
But several events loomed that would also force attention on the issue, leaving Mr. Obama vulnerable to continued criticism.
On Thursday, Mr. Obama is to visit the Los Angeles home of the actor George Clooney for a campaign fund-raiser expected to raise about $12 million, much of it from Hollywood people active in the gay rights cause.
Mr. Obama is scheduled to give the commencement address next week at Barnard College in New York City, where he will receive a medal along with Evan Wolfson, the founder and president of Freedom to Marry, a leading advocate for same-sex unions. Mr. Wolfson, who had written that he would “whisper in the president’s ear” to support same-sex marriage, said in an interview on Wednesday, “I’m going to shout, ‘Thank you!’ ”
Also on Monday, Mr. Obama is to speak at a campaign fund-raiser for gay rights supporters. And on June 6, he is to return to Los Angeles to speak at a gala benefiting the gay, bisexual and transgender community.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: May 10, 2012
An earlier version of this article incorrectly reported that Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s office did not flag his comments about gay marriage in a transcript of his “Meet the Press” remarks that was circulated in the West Wing on Friday. The comments were highlighted in yellow.
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A Watershed Move, Both Risky and Inevitable
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
President Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage on Wednesday was by any measure a watershed. A sitting United States president took sides in what many people consider the last civil rights movement, providing the most powerful evidence to date of how rapidly views are moving on an issue that was politically toxic just five years ago.
Mr. Obama faces considerable risk in jumping into this debate, reluctantly or not, in the heat of what is expected to be a close election. The day before he announced his position, voters in North Carolina — a critical state for Mr. Obama and the site of the Democratic convention this summer — approved by a 20-point margin a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. It was the 31st state to pass such an amendment.
As George W. Bush demonstrated in 2004, when his campaign engineered initiatives against gay marriage in a series of swing states, opponents are far more likely to vote on these issues than supporters. Mitt Romney, the probable Republican presidential candidate, was quick to proclaim his opposition to gay marriage after Mr. Obama spoke. And however much national attitudes may be shifting, the issue remains highly contentious among black and Latino voters, two groups central to Mr. Obama’s success.
Yet as Mr. Obama has clearly come to recognize, the forces of history appear to be changing. The president was at risk of seeming politically timid and calculating, standing at the sidelines while a large number of Americans — including members of both parties — embraced gay marriage. That is a particularly discordant image, many Democrats said, for the man who was the nation’s first black president.
Mr. Obama’s declaration may have been belated and unplanned, forced out after his vice president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., during a television interview on Sunday declared his support for same-sex marriage. Still, it is a huge voice added to a chorus that has become increasingly robust, a reminder that a view that had once been relegated to the dark sidelines of political debate has become mainstream.
The very riskiness of what Mr. Obama did — some commentators were invoking Lyndon B. Johnson’s embrace of civil rights in 1964, with all the attendant political perils — made it hard to understate the historic significance of what took place at the White House on Wednesday.
“If you are one of those who care about this issue, you will not forget where you were when you saw the president deliver those remarks,” said Chad Griffin, the incoming president of the Human Rights Campaign, a gay advocacy group. “Regardless of how old you are, it’s the first time you have ever seen a president of the United States look into a camera and say that a gay person should be treated equally under the law. The message that that sends, to a young gay or transgendered person struggling to come out, is life changing.”
It also was a reminder of just how quickly public and political attitudes are changing. The first organizers of the modern gay-rights movement, after the June 1969 raid on the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in New York City, considered themselves bold in hoping they could pass nondiscrimination acts. They did not seriously contemplate a day when members of the same sex would be permitted to marry.
It has been only 16 years since Bill Clinton — the second Democratic presidential candidate to campaign before a gay audience at an event open to the news media — signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman, permitting states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages conducted in other states.
Mr. Clinton advocated the bill in the midst of a re-election campaign after his aides concluded that opposing it might be risky. Mr. Clinton has since said he regrets that decision; Mr. Obama instructed his Justice Department not to defend the act.
In some ways, Mr. Obama is late to the party. Mr. Biden was just the latest prominent Democrat to announce his support, and many now say that it seems unthinkable that by 2016 any serious Democratic presidential candidate would oppose gay marriage. A series of significant Republican figures — Ken Mehlman, the former Republican Party chairman, Theodore Olson, who was solicitor general under Mr. Bush — have also been active in pushing gay marriage.
The North Carolina vote in some ways distracts from what polling shows to be a steady increase in the percentage of Americans who say they support gay marriage or domestic partnerships; it is now a majority. The numbers are particularly high among younger Americans, suggesting that this is a wave likelier to grow than to recede.
All of which suggests that there are, in addition to the risks, clear potential upsides for Mr. Obama. His announcement, while symbolic rather than carrying the force of law, could energize big parts of his base, particularly younger voters, and reassure liberal Democrats who had been disappointed with Mr. Obama on this issue. It will no doubt help with gay people, already among his biggest donors.
And Mr. Obama’s announcement came as Mr. Romney has been seeking to shift to the middle; independent voters and women are two constituencies that tend to support gay marriage. Now, though, he is almost certainly going to face pressure from his base to take the fight on gay marriage to Mr. Obama.
“President Obama has now made the definition of marriage a defining issue in the presidential contest, especially in swing states like Ohio, North Carolina, Virginia, Florida and Nevada,” said Brian S. Brown, the president of the National Organization for Marriage.
In truth, Republicans and Democrats are hardly sure whether this will be a deciding issue in any state, given how pressing economic concerns are, particularly in the swing states.
Polls show that gay marriage is not a huge concern to swing voters. Is Mr. Romney really going to want to spend the next five months talking about gay marriage, rather than the economy and jobs? And Mr. Obama may be no more eager to discuss the issue further, to be drawn into the weeds of this argument.
Yet perhaps on this day, short-term political calculations are not what people are likely to recall in talking about Mr. Obama’s interview in years to come.
“I don’t think it’s about particular states or particular demographics,” said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic strategist.
“He said the right thing,” he said. “He did the right thing. People are going to overanalyze the politics of this.”
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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/10/opinion/president-obamas-moment.html?ref=opinion
President Obama’s Moment
It has always taken strong national leadership to expand equal rights in this country, and it has long been obvious that marriage rights are no exception. President Obama offered some of that leadership on Wednesday. “I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Mr. Obama said in an interview with ABC News that the White House arranged for the purpose of giving Mr. Obama a forum to say just that.
With those 10 words, Mr. Obama finally stopped temporizing and “evolving” his position on same-sex marriage and took the moral high ground on what may be the great civil rights struggle of our time. His words will not end the bitter fight over marriage rights, which we fear will continue for years to come. But they were of great symbolic value, and perhaps more. As Mayor Michael Bloomberg noted, no expansion of rights embraced by a president has failed to become the law of the land.
This is a president and a White House that has not always been unwavering in taking positions of principle, including on this issue. Mr. Obama’s statement followed days of unseemly equivocation by the White House after Vice President Joseph Biden Jr. announced his support for same-sex marriage on Sunday. It also came one day after North Carolina voters approved a constitutional amendment forbidding same-sex marriage and civil unions, which threatens all unmarried couples, health coverage for their children and domestic violence laws.
Still, the contrast was sharp between Mr. Obama and Mitt Romney, who took a hard-line position on Wednesday against same-sex marriage and civil unions with similar rights. He has said he favors a national constitutional amendment enshrining this particular bigotry.
Mr. Obama consciously presented his change of position (he used to favor so-called civil unions but not marriage) as a personal journey. He said he thought about “members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together,” and about “those soldiers or airmen or Marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage.”
That process will seem familiar to Americans of his and older generations who have reached the same place, or are still getting there. Polling shows that younger Americans have firmly supported same-sex marriage for some time. Mr. Obama said denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples “doesn’t make sense” to his daughters. “Frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective,” he said. But there remains strong opposition among some older Americans, particularly Christian evangelicals and African-Americans. The White House is hoping Mr. Obama can help soften opposition among black voters over time.
We have one major point of disagreement with Mr. Obama: his support for the concept of states deciding this issue on their own. That position effectively restricts the right to marry to the 20 states that have not adopted the kind of constitutional prohibitions North Carolina voters approved on Tuesday.
Mr. Obama should remember that, in 1967, the Supreme Court said no state could prohibit mixed-race marriages because “marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man.’ ” Those rights are too precious and too fragile to be left up to the whim of states and the tearing winds of modern partisan politics.
A federal judge in California, supported by an appellate court panel, has ruled that a ban on same-sex marriage violates the 14th Amendment right to equal protection. That decision will probably reach the Supreme Court, and, when it does, we expect Mr. Obama, if he is still president, will take the final step in his evolutionary process and direct the Justice Department to support that ruling and urge the court to uphold equality in every state.
Liberty and Justice for All
By CHARLES M. BLOWIt is done.
On Wednesday, a president of the United States of America, Barack Obama, officially embraced same-sex marriage.
He told ABC News:
At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.
It is important to pause here for a moment to appreciate the historical weight of this moment before recounting the president’s past “evolving” on the subject or delving into tomorrow’s strategizing about its political implications.
No one should underestimate the power of this message coming from the president.
Obama explained his decision in a religious framework and revealed that the first lady was involved in this decision:
This is something that, you know, we’ve talked about over the years and she, you know, she feels the same way, she feels the same way that I do. And that is that, in the end the values that I care most deeply about and she cares most deeply about is how we treat other people and, you know, I, you know, we are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, you know, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule, you know, treat others the way you would want to be treated. And I think that’s what we try to impart to our kids and that’s what motivates me as president, and I figure the most consistent I can be in being true to those precepts, the better I’ll be as a dad and a husband and, hopefully, the better I’ll be as president.
Amen.
Today, we are an inch taller as a nation. Today, we are a mile closer to the ideals described in the Declaration of Independence. Today, we have been transported light-years beyond where many ever thought we would be.
Video via ABCNews.com
History will remember this president in this moment. He stood up for personal liberty and publicly affirmed what should have needed no affirmation: that in a just society the rights of some must be the rights of all, that we do not condemn those who love differently, that we are all made greater when we are all treated equally.
Joe Solmonese, the president of the Human Rights Campaign, issued a statement today that read in part:
Today, President Obama made history by boldly stating that gay and lesbian Americans should be fully and equally part of the fabric of American society and that our families deserve nothing less than the equal respect and recognition that comes through marriage. His presidency has shown that our nation can move beyond its shameful history of discrimination and injustice.
Some have argued that the president should have delayed any movement on this issue until after the election, so as to not provide Republicans with a wedge issue.
I strongly disagree with this position.
There is no wrong time to do the right thing. But the calculation of delay can erode the virtue of acting on what your conscience is telling you. The courage required in the present is greater than the comforts afforded by the future.
Not everyone will be happy. Important positions are not always popular. But they are necessary. Leaders with vision understand this.
As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable.” In fact,
Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.
Risking the objection of some supporters is part of the sacrifice. But King also said that “a genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”
I don’t know about you, but I prefer leadership from leaders.
It is a natural impulse of all people to live freely in their own truth. President Obama yesterday lent his voice to affirming the basic humanity of gay and lesbian communities.
Standing up for what one truly believes is one of the greatest things a person can do. And, in the end, I believe that most Americans respect the courage of conviction and the pursuit of fairness, even if they have not come to accept same-sex marriage or even homosexuality.
Courage in politics isn’t always plentiful, and justice in the world isn’t always swift. Could Obama have moved more quickly? Maybe. But the important thing to remember is that he did move.
No, Backing Marriage Equality Won't Cost Obama Support of Black Voters
President Barack Obama became the first sitting president to voice his support for same-sex marriage. Now, black people will refuse to vote for him [1]
I’m being facetious, of course, but other pundits [2]
aren’t: this is one of the talking points circulating in response to
the president’s courageous and historic move to publicly endorse
marriage equality. The idea that backing same-sex marriage will cost a
politician the support of black voters has gained currency since the
2004 election, when then President George W. Bush won re-election in
part by kowtowing to his social conservative base and promoting a
federal ban on gay marriage. That year, Bush captured 11 percent of the black vote [3],
a sizeable portion for a Republican, perhaps due in part to his stance
on marriage and the vein of social conservatism that runs through black
America. In 2008, the year Obama was elected, California’s Proposition 8 [4],
a ballot initiative to take away same-sex marriage rights in the state,
passed and again black people found themselves being blamed for rights
being denied to the LGBT community, untrue as that was. Yes, a majority
of black voters supported Prop 8, but only 10 percent of the overall vote [5]
in favor of the initiative came from black voters. And now, with
Obama’s bold proclamation, the old fears that black people will simply
be too homophobic to back a candidate that is in favor of same-sex
marriage are resurfacing.
That’s ridiculous. Yes, according to a composite of ABC/Washington Post polling data, 55 percent of black people oppose same-sex marriage [6], but even with that being the case, in California in 2008 the black voted supported Prop 8 and Obama. It’s true that in 2008 Obama was not a supporter of same-sex marriage, and that at the time voters did not have to reconcile voting for a pro&endash;marriage equality candidate if they didn’t support it themselves. But as Keith Boykin points out over at BET [7], Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick and former New York Governor David Paterson (both black men) have both been vocal proponents of marriage equality and enjoyed support from the black community. It’s an unfounded idea that black voters reject black politicians that support same-sex marriage.
Even if some percentage of black voters did refuse to vote for Obama because of his support for same-sex marriage, this would hardly ruin Obama’s re-election chances. The math doesn’t work. For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the 11 percent of black people Bush convinced to vote for him ‘04 did so solely on the basis of his anti–marriage equality stance. John Kerry captured 88 percent of the black vote. In 2008, Obama won 95 percent of the black vote [8]. Assume that Obama will win at least the same percentage in 2012 as Kerry did in 2004, but no more than what he got in 2008. According to a Pew Research Center poll [9], in 2004 21 percent of African-Americans supported same-sex marriage and 67 percent opposed it. In 2012, that poll finds that black support for same-sex marriage has grown to 39 percent in favor, while the percentage opposed has dropped to 49 percent. Unless that 11 percent of the African-American vote that is in play represents the staunchest of anti–marriage equality activists, it’s safe to assume that some of them are among those who now support gay marriage. All told, Obama can likely count on at least 90 percent of the black vote.
The other fear is that Obama’s stance will depress the turnout. Black voters comprised 13 percent of the electorate in 2008, a record turnout, up from 11 percent in ‘04. But will his stance on gay marriage really keep voters home in an election in which the economy is on the top of voter’s minds?
What will any of this mean in November 2012? Absolutely no one knows. This is why we have elections. But I find it very hard to believe that the first black president has to worry about a costly exodus of black voters this year. The polling evidence we have doesn’t support that theory.
That said, the reality is that somewhere between 49 and 55 percent of black people in this country oppose marriage equality. That frustrates me. The most popular narrative regarding black people’s lack of support for same-sex marriage might have you believing we’re either the only or the most homophobic community in America. That’s far from true, but that doesn’t mean homophobia isn’t an issue. I choose to speak homophobia among black people for a simple and selfish reason: they’re my people. I’d like to see us do better.
Opposition to marriage equality among black people supports the preposterous notion that the black and LGBT communities are separate and exclusive, as if one cannot be a member of both. We have and always have had (despite what any Twitter prophet tries to tell you about homosexuality not existing in “Ancient Africa”) lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender members of the black community. The heteros among us owe it to them to fight for their specific set of issues as deeply and forcefully as we expect non-black LGBT people to fight against racism.
It also irks me that any marginalized group would actively attempt to legalize the discrimination of another marginalized group. No matter the teachings of your religious tradition, if we cannot connect through our experience of oppression, we don’t stand a chance at challenging and/or dismantling any of the institutions that serve further deny our human rights.
So while I find it ludicrous to suggest that Obama, or any other politician, will face a referendum from the black community if they choose to stand on the right side of history and support marriage equality, it’s true that too many of us are standing on the wrong side. Freedom may move on without us, but I want my people to be along for the ride.
Links:
[1] http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/rep-allen-west-obama-may-lose-african-american-votes-over-gay-marriage/
[2] http://ideas.time.com/2012/05/09/will-black-voters-punish-obama-for-his-support-of-gay-rights/?iid=op-main-lede
[3] http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html
[4] http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/prop-8-myths.html
[5] http://www.alternet.org/election08/107474/why_prop_8_passed_in_california:_the_myth_of_the_black_gay_divide/
[6] http://www.politico.com/politico44/2012/05/polls-show-a-mixed-picture-for-legalizing-gay-marriage-122984.html
[7]
http://www.bet.com/news/features/vote-2012/news/politics/2012/05/09/commentary-blacks-won-t-abandon-obama-over-gay-marriage.html
[8] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1083335/Breakdown-demographics-reveals-black-voters-swept-Obama-White-House.html
[9] http://www.people-press.org/2012/04/25/more-support-for-gun-rights-gay-marriage-than-in-2008-or-2004/