Prop 8: Like Icing on the Change?

On September 21, 1996, a Republican Congress passed the bill, and then-President Bill Clinton signed into law the historic Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages licensed in other states. According to “About.com: Lesbian Life,” Obama opposed DOMA (however, not as a senator).

With the “yes”-vote on Prop 8 last week, Massachusetts and Connecticut thus remain the only two states in which same-sex marriage is legal. In 2000, Vermont became the first state to adopt a civil unions law, granting gay and lesbian couples the same state benefits, civil rights, and protections to same-sex couples as to married couples. Since, New Jersey (2006), and New Hampshire (2007) have followed suit. Domestic partnership bills, another way of extending legal rights to same-sex couples, have been passed in the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Maine, Oregon and Washington.

(Click here for a rundown on state-by-state marriage license laws)

Change in Sight?

In his 2004 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, a young Senator Obama proclaimed:

“There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America – there’s the United States of America. The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and have gay friends in the Red States.”

It was this speech, which rocketed Obama to the higher echelons of US politics, and secured him a seat at the table of great American political orators. But is Obama all talk?

Under the official Obama homepage section, “Issues,” a clear stance on gay marriage is nowhere to be found – not under “Family,” or “Faith,” nor under “Education,” “Civil Rights” or “Ethics.”

However, as this video shows, Obama is not for gay marriage, he is for civil union.

Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post, yesterday, Nov. 10th, made this appeal:

“On or about December 1910,” Virginia Woolf wrote, “human character changed.” We can be much more specific: “On November 4, 2008, just after 11 pm Eastern, America changed” (human character remains rather intransigent).

The change was driven by two things: our country’s remarkable capacity for regeneration, and Barack Obama’s remarkable ability to tap into the better angels of our nature.

A country can change only to the extent that the individuals within it change (and some changes come slower than others, as evidenced by Prop 8 and the other gay marriage bans that passed on Tuesday). […] Now it’s Obama’s turn to pull off this rare presidential double play.

15 years ago, in 1993, former President Clinton rolled out another gay policy, which should become known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” What was meant to “[relax] the long-standing bar against gay men and women serving in the U.S. military,” notes a 2008 TIME article, today is seen as a “liability.” “It boiled down to this: the government would no longer ‘ask’ recruits if they were gay, and so long as military personnel didn’t ‘tell’ anyone of their sexual preference — and didn’t engage in homosexual acts — they were free to serve,” TIME writes. 

Then, Congress found:

The presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would create an unacceptable risk to the high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion that are the essence of military capability.

But with so many challenges ahead, the questions remains, whether or not that is a debate Obama is going to be willing to take; and if yes, when? And while exit polls showed 96% of black voters voting for Obama during the recent election, exit polls from California’s Proposition 8 showed 70% of African American, and 53% of Latino, voters voting for the proposition that would ban same-sex minorities equal rights. 

Obama will need as big a wave as he can get riding into the White House, and there is already pressure on him to move swiftly once in there. But he needs to come out standing. No matter what he does, he could end up losing valuable support. For someone who has stressed the need, and ability, to reach across the table, this could prove as good a test as any.

In the Media: watch as Bill O’Reilly and Keith Olbermann give their take on gay rights

Keith Olbermann: “If this country hadn’t redefined marriage, black people couldn’t marry white people”

Bill O’Reilly:

By Peter Dahl