(Note: the full responses to the question on same-sex marriage can be found on the CNN transcript, a little above the half-way point.
Biden did a masterful job of making this about rights, not about who's married and who isn't. He did a much better job of setting forth his opinions and left Palin sputtering in the background without any way of strongly differentiating herself, and left the impression that she agreed with what he'd said. At the very least, he boxed her into a corner where in order to she had to announce that a McCain/Palin administration would make no move to block civil unions.
Let me repeat that: Four years after gay marriage was used as a fear tactic in the 2004 elections, the Republican VP candidate essentially conceded the field on civil unions.
The Republican Vice Presidential candidate could find no objections to treating homosexual couples as different under the law; she could only make noises about the wording and since Biden had flat-out said that he wasn't talking about supporting gay marriage, but equal rights under the law, she didn't have a leg to stand on. A better debater, someone more experienced and educated on the issue at hand, might have been able to dig her way out of that one and define her own stance on the issues, but Palin, being Palin, didn't have a chance.
BIDEN: Absolutely. Do I support granting same-sex benefits? Absolutely positively. Look, in an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple.
The fact of the matter is that under the Constitution we should be granted -- same-sex couples should be able to have visitation rights in the hospitals, joint ownership of property, life insurance policies, et cetera. That's only fair.
It's what the Constitution calls for. And so we do support it. We do support making sure that committed couples in a same-sex marriage are guaranteed the same constitutional benefits as it relates to their property rights, their rights of visitation, their rights to insurance, their rights of ownership as heterosexual couples do.
Visitation rights. Joint ownership of property. Life insurance policies. He avoided the hot-button issues like parenting, and went straight to the administrative stuff where it's much harder to object to equality under the law. Nobody's out there marching with a sign that says NO LIFE INSURANCE EQUALITY FOR GAYS. Biden made the whole thing seem very normal and unobjectionable.
Palin was left with her bullet point on "one man and one woman" and a hint that equality under the law sometimes leads to marriage equality-- as in Massachussetts and California. (Well, sure, because the Constitution is on the side of equality instead of senseless discrimination, and judges have to make decisions based on the Constitution... but I digress.)
But-- and here's the important part-- she then spent twice as much time defending herself from being called a bigot, in spite of Biden never doing so or even hinting at it.
PALIN: But I also want to clarify, if there's any kind of suggestion at all from my answer that I would be anything but tolerant of adults in America choosing their partners, choosing relationships that they deem best for themselves, you know, I am tolerant and I have a very diverse family and group of friends and even within that group you would see some who may not agree with me on this issue, some very dear friends who don't agree with me on this issue.
Let's take a moment to admire that one, folks. Biden did such a good job of setting up the question to mean equal rights under the law on unobjectionable points that Palin felt the need to spend most of her time talking about how she KNOWS gay people and she LIKES gay people and so she's not a bigot, m'kay? She threw in a lot of dog whistles (which must also be on the index card for this question) indicating that she thinks homosexuality is a choice, but still, she was on the defensive and it showed.
And then, the best part of her answer:
But in that tolerance also, no one would ever propose, not in a McCain-Palin administration, to do anything to prohibit, say, visitations in a hospital or contracts being signed, negotiated between parties.
It looks like Sarah Palin did not have equality in life insurance, joint property rights, or hospital visitation rights on her index cards under the "gay = bad" heading. She couldn't find any objections to them. She just backed up and conceded everything that didn't involve the word "marriage"-- and she completely neglected to pull out that favorite emotional trump card of Republicans everywhere: but what about the children???
Neither one of them said a word about kids in this. I don't know when the last time is that I've heard a national debate involve homosexual relationships without someone yapping about how concerned they are that children will be harmed somehow-- and Palin didn't even hint at it. Without mentioning kids, it looked like there was no difference between her thoughts on civil unions, and Joe Biden's. All she had was "but don't call it marriage!"
In short, Sarah Palin just conceded the field on civil unions.
Biden drove the point home:
BIDEN: Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage. We do not support that. That is basically the decision to be able to be able to be left to faiths and people who practice their faiths the determination what you call it.
The bottom line though is, and I'm glad to hear the governor, I take her at her word, obviously, that she think there should be no civil rights distinction, none whatsoever, between a committed gay couple and a committed heterosexual couple. If that's the case, we really don't have a difference.
I'm fascinated by his little bit on the terminology and how "what you call it" should be left to the religious side of things. I've heard that sort of thing mentioned almost exclusively in arguments that all marriage, on the civil side, should technically be civil unions-- gay, straight, all of them-- since that's strictly about the rights, responsibilities, and privileges that the government concerns itself with re: realtionships... and that anyone who wants to call it marriage can go have their marriage ceremony in a church or whatever. I'm pretty sure Biden isn't advocating that, exactly, because said he said flat-out that he doesn't support "redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage", but it's still doing a hell of a lot to separate the civil rights aspect of same-sex relationships from the religious aspect. In short, "we're not going to come into your church and make you marry the gayfolks". It's something that Democrats tend to think of as obvious, but there's a strong paranoia in Republican circles that if they give ground on gay rights, they'll lose their rights to religious freedom.
Palin absolutely could not get out of that one, and when asked for her answer by Ifill, she gave her shortest answer of the night:
IFILL: Is that what you said?
PALIN: Your question to him was whether he supported gay marriage and my answer is the same as his and it is that I do not.
IFILL: Wonderful. You agree.
The best part about her answer was how it took her the whole sentence to get to the point. It made her look like she was trying hard to find her footing, and resorted to the bullet point "against gay marriage" on her index cards.
All in all, an excellent job by Joe Biden. He boxed her in, he defined the question on his terms, he made her concede those terms, he made her paranoid about looking like a bigot (and isn't it cool that things have changed so much that Republicans are actually paranoid about that?), and he did all this without looking mean, or threatening, and without saying anything about Palin's motivations.
On a side note: I didn't know much about Joe Biden before this year, but the more I learn, the better I like him-- and the debate last night sealed it for me. Obama is my president and my hero, but I have to admit I rest a little easier knowning that the unthinkable happens, Joe Biden is on the case.
Edited to add, since so many people are talking about it: I believe absolutely, no questions asked, that everyone should be able to marry the person of their choice, and that civil unions are a separate-but-equal measure that does not have the clout of marriage. Nobody should have to settle for separate-but-equal.
I also know that the fundies, the people that Palin was picked to appeal to, are so paranoid about gay marriage that anything, anything approaching it-- civil unions most strongly included-- freaks them out. Let's remember that a lot of those state-level constitutional amendments that got pushed through as part of the Republican GOTV effort for 2004 also bar civil unions; for a lot of people in that mindset, they're one and the same.
Joe Biden didn't push for gay marriage, and I wish he would have, wish he could have. In the meantime, though, he boxed Palin in on the legal issues and captured a big chunk of enemy territory, debate-wise. It's going to be harder for Republicans to argue about this now that their leaders have conceded pretty much everything except the word "marriage". Look how far we've come in four years-- California wasn't even a blip on the radar in the debate, and the Republican VP candidate did the "I have gay friends, so I'm not a bigot!" routine. Four years! This isn't the end; this is the tipping point. We've got a lot of work to do, but the momentum is on our side.
We've got 'em on the run, folks.