"President Obama, for instance, is also against gay marriage -- a dirty little secret many of my gay friends were shocked to discover. But you'd never know it because he always 'sounds' so inclusive" — Meghan McCain.
"The Democratic Party isn't a safer place to be for Gay people than the Republican Party" — Meghan McCain
Rachel Maddow, on her show, agreed with the sentiment expressed in these statements. While I applaud Meghan McCain for standing up for marriage equality and gay rights, she is actually using typical Republican tactics to scare up votes for the Republican Party (this time, gay votes), namely hyperbole, misleading and outright false statements. For her part, Rachel (I love her, but she's wrong) is being a typical left wing cynic in responding favorably to McCain's statements.
Follow below the jump while I annihilate Meghan Mccain's very endearing form of sophistry.
The Democratic Party isn't a safer place to be for Gay people than the Republican Party
What Ms. McCain is suggesting is that Obama and the Democrats really don't support gay rights. Therefore, if you are gay, go ahead and vote Republican. This is one of those attempts by Republicans to make up seem down and down seem up. Here Obama = John McCain on gay rights, Republicans are just as good as Democrats on gay rights.
Now, let's be honest, Obama doesn't officially support gay marriage (dirty little secret or not), but his position is a far cry from any Republicans, including Meghan's father John.
Here is what the John McCain run Republican Party adopted into its party platform:
Because our children’s future is best preserved within the traditional understanding of marriage, we call for a constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage as a union of a man and a woman, so that judges cannot make other arrangements equivalent to it.
Here's what the Barack Obama run Democratic Party platform adopted into its platform:
We support the full inclusion of all families in the life of our nation, and support equal responsibility, benefits, and protections. We will enact a comprehensive bipartisan employment non-discrimination act. We oppose the Defense of Marriage Act and all attempts to use this issue to divide us.
That's hardly, in any way, equivalent or analogous to anything the Republicans offer. It may not be its 180º opposite, but I, as a gay man, most certainly feel safer with the latter than the former.
On the Colbert Report Ms. McCain smugly spoke about how she's still waiting on Obama to eradicate Don't Ask, Don't Tell. She acts as though she's invented the issue, as though those of us on the left who are a bit older than her haven't put in all the hard work getting us to a point where Meghan McCain could actually voice such ideas without being a complete laughing stock.
What she fails to mention is that Congress is responsible for acting on this. It's law. Obama could do more by using his bully pulpit to advocate for the abolition of this policy. However, Obama is not the great straight savior coming down from the mountain top. He's a politician, and politicians need political will. Political will isn't created by politicians in times of great national crisis going out on a limb to take on the culture war. Politicians, responsible ones any way, have to deal with the most pressing national needs: the economy, war, torture, healthcare, etc... I'd love for gay rights to be a pressing national need, but the public doesn't agree. It is our job, the activists, to make it so. More on that later.
For those who think Obama's been too milquetoast on the issue, you have some legitimate points. However, Obama was the FIRST candidate to ever address gay rights in a church. He did that at Ebenezer Baptist Church last year. We had a lot of discussion in these parts about race and homophobia in the fallout of Prop 8. What I've learned since then, is, that religiosity, not race, played the biggest role in the way people voted on the issue. As African-Americans are the most religious amongst us, African-Americans were most likely to vote for Prop 8. That is why these words at Ebenezer Baptist are some of the most courageous by any Presidential candidate ever:
For most of this country's history, we in the African-American community have been at the receiving end of man's inhumanity to man. And all of us understand intimately the insidious role that race still sometimes plays - on the job, in the schools, in our health care system, and in our criminal justice system.
And yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must admit that none of our hands are entirely clean. If we're honest with ourselves, we'll acknowledge that our own community has not always been true to King's vision of a beloved community.
We have scorned our gay brothers and sisters instead of embracing them. The scourge of anti-Semitism has, at times, revealed itself in our community. For too long, some of us have seen immigrants as competitors for jobs instead of companions in the fight for opportunity.
While, it is but one sentence, rather than a series of wish list bullet points that many gays would like to hear, in its context, in time, place, and literature, it is profound. No other presidential candidate has condemned the unequal place gays hold in our society in any church, let alone, and African-American church. And in its context, Obama has essentially declared that gay equality IS part of King's dream. No minor commitment to the morality of gay equality. Could you get that from any Republican? Indeed, you'd get that morally courageous stance from few Democrats.
Yes, I wish Obama would hurry up and bring gay equality into being. But Obama can only do what is politically pressing at this moment of national crisis. If you want it to be politically pressing, come up with something better than that Obama isn't really any different than John McCain and the Republicans.