Hillary Clinton, addressing a gay-pride celebration at the State Department this week, was in high spirits.
The “historic vote in New York” legalizing same-sex marriage, the secretary of state told the gathering of foreign service workers, “gives such visibility and credibility to everything that so many of you have done over so many years.”
Clinton exulted: “I’ve always believed that we would make progress because we were on the right side of equality and justice.”
Clinton left out one salient detail, though: She and President Obama oppose legalizing gay marriage. It was but the latest display of the internal contradiction in the Obama administration’s policy on gay marriage.
At the core of Obama’s stance is a logical inconsistency: He believes gay Americans should be fully equal under the law, but by opposing gay marriage he supports a system that denies same-sex couples hundreds of federal rights and benefits that married couples receive. The civil unions Obama favors as an alternative have little meaning in federal law.
Few questioned Obama’s (or Clinton’s) civil-union dodge during the 2008 presidential campaign, because gay marriage was politically impossible in most parts of the country. But the vote by the New York Legislature and national polling have shown that marriage equality, though still politically difficult, is within reach.
For Obama, this is less about the issue than about leadership. Even if he backed gay marriage, it wouldn’t become legal without Congress rewriting the federal definition of marriage, which currently demands “a legal union between one man and one woman.” But if Obama really believes, as he says, that a class of Americans is suffering unconstitutional discrimination, you’d think he would take a stand as a matter of principle.
On the eve of the vote in New York, Obama was heckled by an audience of gay New Yorkers when he again declined to endorse gay marriage. He further infuriated listeners with his observation that “traditionally marriage has been decided by the states” — a position that would leave unchallenged the 41 states that ban same-sex marriage.
Speaking at the gay-pride event about the “especially momentous and extraordinary” New York vote, Clinton concluded: “We have to continue to stand up for the rights and the well-being of LGBT people.”
A worthy challenge. So why doesn’t the administration answer it?
