The Chris Moeller Archives

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President Obama's public endorsement today of same-sex marriage is an enormous victory for the gay rights movement. When such a congenitally-cowardly figure like Obama, and his ceaselessly-triangulating advisers, get sufficiently uncomfortable and reach the conclusion that they can gain politically in his re-election year by announcing his mythical conversion on the issue three days after trying out the new public stance first through Vice President Biden, it is testament to the tireless work the core movement has done over a period of decades to pressure their elected officials into action and to sway public allowance for such an announcement. Bringing Obama to the Dick Cheney-level of public support for gay rights-- and back to the position he held publicly himself before running for Senate in Illinois-- certainly proved to be no easy task. To all of the human rights organizations that have done the heavy lifting on this-- today is yours. A more perfect union indeed.

6:17pm update: Now that ABC has released the full statement by the president, it appears that he's only stating his "personal position" on gay marriage. He still supports the idea of states deciding the issue for themselves-- and therefore opposes the idea that this individual right for gays is covered by the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. Nobody would have stated-- or did-- during the 1960s that a politician supported the idea of civil rights for African-Americans if he or she called it a "state's rights" issue. Ron Paul calls abortion a "state's rights" issue and nobody calls him "pro-choice." The Southern states thought slavery to be a "state's rights" issue. That actually made them "pro-slavery."

Forty-four states currently make it illegal for same-sex couples to wed, and though he told us today that he would vote differently, President Obama has no problem with that. A day after the North Carolina referendum to constitutionally deny marriage rights arbitrarily to part of their consenting adult population, Obama is endorsing their verdict to do so. Human rights groups still have much more heavy lifting to do.