Update: In an interview with ABC News on Wednesday afternoon, President Obama announced his support for same-sex marriage, saying, "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."
In the days before the vote in North Carolina on Amendment 1, which would ban same-sex marriages and civil unions, people on both sides came to believe that they could win. North Carolina was the single state in the South that didn’t have such language in its constitution; there was real if distant hope that it might never be one. A contingent of clergymen and local politicians had, surprisingly, come out against the ban; one of the original sponsors changed his mind. Bill Clinton recorded a Robocall. There was a frenzy of phoning, texting, and neighborly persuasion. Amendment 1’s supporters, meanwhile, brought out the Reverend Billy Graham, who said that voting for the bill was the Christian thing to do, and put him in a full-page ad in local newspapers. The sum both sides spent approached three million dollars. More voters cast ballots than did four years ago, even though, in 2008, there was a real race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and this year it’s Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. There were reports of angry confrontations at polling stations. It was, in other words, a fight—no matter how lopsided.
The opponents of Amendment 1 could have used some reinforcements. The bill passed, by about sixty to forty per cent—not even close, despite a dawning recognition that Amendment 1 is a very bad bill for very many people. Same-sex marriage was already illegal; by adding a ban on civil unions, it appears to compromise protections for any couple living together, and will cause many in the state, including many children, to lose their health insurance. (Anne Stringfield has more on what Amendment 1 would do.) The final stretch was something of a race against time for the opponents of the bill to explain to North Carolinians just what they were voting for. And then time ran out.
During the last rush of the campaign, members of the Obama Administration were also out talking about same-sex marriage—but in a very different way. On Sunday, Vice-President Joseph Biden had, in somewhat convoluted terms, said that he was “comfortable” with gay and lesbian couples having the same legal protections that any couple would. This might not, once the sentences were diagrammed, have been a full defense of gay marriage, but it was close—closer than President Barack Obama has been. Too close: the Administration reacted with edgy mortification. After Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education, then said in plain words that he was a supporter of gay marriage, there were reports of more dismay. As much as Obama talks about his support for civil unions and how he is “evolving” on the subject, he and his team acted like they were afraid—as if gay marriage wasn’t a celebration, but something to whisper about.
President Obama issued a statement weeks ago saying that he was opposed to Amendment 1. But at a moment as crucial as this, that wasn’t enough, either. Rather than using every opportunity to explain something that made a lot of sense (a “no” vote on Amendment 1), his proxies were out reciting an argument that made no sense at all (why what Biden said was just like what Obama had always said, and that both were for equal rights but not for gay marriage). The Obama campaign clearly believes that it needs North Carolina in November; he has visited the state repeatedly, and it is the site of this year's Democratic National Convention. Another trip was briefly scheduled for Tuesday. It was cancelled. (The White House told reporters that this was due to an “internal miscommunication” about the schedule.)
Perhaps there was a fear that Obama would do more harm than good, by galvanizing Amendment 1’s supporters. That sort of speculation is hard to tease out, given how motivated those forces already were, the role of the black community, and the possible effect of having the President just explain what was in the Amendment. And North Carolina is, again, a state the President hopes to win; how harmful could his presence be?
The larger rationale, of course, is that same-sex marriage is much too toxic politically for him—even now—and that if the President wants to be President next year he has to stay away. The corollary is a sense that waiting it out is good enough, because public opinion on same-sex marriage is changing so quickly that the problem will take care of itself; we will wake up one morning, society will have reached a consensus, and barriers will fall down, without anyone losing an electoral vote.
It is true that there is a tide in public opinion, and it is moving toward a general acceptance of same-sex marriage. A recent poll found that a narrow majority of Americans already support it. But that does not mean that you can just step aside and let the waves roll, watching appreciatively from some safe distance, checking, every now and then, to see if anyone would notice if you inched forward. If there is a lesson in the North Carolina vote, it is that complacency on this issue is not a victimless stance. Not all of the movement on gay marriage has been forward progress. There are families whose lives will now get worse. They, and we, have arrived at a moment when politicians—including the President—need to say what they believe, what risks they are willing to take, and what, in the end, is worth fighting for.
Photograph by Gerry Broome/AP Photo.
