So in the wake of North Carolina’s incredibly asshole move yesterday, the President is finally stepping out and saying that he thinks same-sex marriage should be legal. Which should come as a shock to absolutely nobody, quite frankly.
Thoughts:
1) Maybe now the Professional Indignant Left will STFU. Not expecting it to happen, but it would be nice. Politics is the art of the possible, and while Presidential leadership is nice, the current political environment means that the only federal movement on this for at least two years would be in the form of a Supreme Court case. You’re not going to get a DOMA repeal with the GOP in control of Congress – and as long as the Democrats don’t have sixty reliable votes in the Senate, then yes, the GOP has control of Congress. So no matter what Obama thinks, his only real power at this point is whatever influence he might have on public opinion; his de jure authority over the matter is effectively nil. So…
2) This is basically a “fuck it, as well hanged for a sheep as a lamb” move. The kind of places where the President’s approval of gay marriage is going to be an issue are, by and large, states that will never vote for him anyway. (Case in point: last night, one-third of West Virginia Democrats voted for a white incarcerated felon over a black sitting President. Fuck you, hillbillies.) Did Obama win North Carolina in 2008? Yes, but right now the math suggests that it’s not critical to the path to 270. More to the point, there are thirty states with gay marriage bans, and Obama got elected on the same night California passed Prop 8, so I doubt it’s a 1-to-1 relationship where he will lose any state with a ban automatically. That said…
3) Not that we needed it, but this is red-flag-to-the-bull material for the GOP, and you can be assured that the holy rollers will reach a higher level of froth than ever that this Satanic atheistic Muslim foreigner will not be satisfied until the United States is [INSERT SPITTLE-FLECKED HYPERBOLE HERE]. This is probably going to be a free gift to a GOP that was having trouble firing up the base to support Multiple Choice Mitt. Again, though, it’s mainly going to drive turnout among holy rollers in states that Obama never had a prayer of winning. Mainly. But…
4) Where it does potentially become a problem is in a few swing states like Colorado or Virginia. To a certain extent, it’s possible that a big boost among rural God-floggers will be enough to offset less socially benighted votes in Arlington or Denver. The counter-argument, by contrast, is that this – and the student-loan push – might be sufficient to push the young voters of 2008 into believing and turning out again. Could be a wash, I don’t know. And when I say I don’t know, I mean…
5) I don’t know. From my cynical professional standpoint, I don’t see a whole lot of upside to this. Anyone with a post-medieval position on the topic of homosexuality should be supporting Obama over any Republican at this point – not on the principal of “lesser of two evils” but on the principle of “first do no harm.” Obama’s not out there working to make things worse for the LGBT community. Any GOP President will effectively be an enabler for the GOP Congress, which is as backward, racist and ultimately harmful a legislative body as ever crawled out of the Deep South. So if Obama’s not leading the first float in the Pride parade, well, it sucks, but that guy’s not running. The choice isn’t between the magical spawn of Harvey Milk and Barney Frank versus the status quo, it’s between a largely sympathizing figure and somebody who will hold the coats of the Philistines.
I don’t know. I just don’t know. I know what’s right, but given how bad things will be in 2013 if a Republican is in the White House, I live in dread of the right thing to do also being the losing thing.
Ultimately, I suppose, it’s a question of how much faith you have in the American people. I have none.