Politicians have the right to evolve on gay marriage
PUNDITS ASK whether President Obama can afford to “change’’ his position on gay marriage. It’s a phony debate about a real issue.
Marriage is deeply personal - our positions are based on unique combinations of reason, belief, and experience, not polling and politics. Everyone is entitled to his own view, in his own time, including the president.
Can gay marriage be a political weapon? Surely it once was. In 2004, a flyer produced by Republicans proclaimed that if I were elected president, men would marry each other. It was a political season in which the Senate calendar was hijacked to debate a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, an amendment I opposed. At our national convention in Boston that summer, I said, “Let’s never misuse for political purposes … the Constitution of the United States. The high road may be harder, but it leads to a better place.’’ In these last seven years we have come closer to that “better place.’’ Indeed, the architect of the Bush campaign, which used gay marriage as a political cudgel in 2004, now supports gay marriage