I'm too lazy to hunt it up, but once upon a time I posted about a bunch of things the media and the public "know" about Democrats. One of which is that they're a bunch of queer-lovers. It doesn't matter if John Kerry, or any of the other Democrats, come out and advocate the construction of concentration camps for gays and lesbians. They're still a bunch of queer-lovers.
Gay Marriage as an issue is here. It isn't going away. I have little patience for those on my side who blame those uppity homos for making it an issue in an election year. Every year is an election year. Now that the Mass. Supreme Court has said "civil unions are not enough," the civil unions semi-dodge is also not enough, particularly for the Senator from Massachusetts. Up until now it's been a reasonable way to try and get around the issue - protect "marriage" while advocating most/all of the legal rights of marriage for gays and lesbians. All the Dem candidates have embraced some version of this. However, while Republicans have had some success because "marriage" is for some reason a hot-button word, as long as this is front and center no amount of blathering about "civil unions" is going to make the issue go away. According to Reuters, Kerry has said that "he favored letting homosexuals enter into civil unions and disagreed with a Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling granting gays the right to marry."
Is it a bad legal decision? Or, is it just icky? It isn't clear. Obviously Kerry would like this issue to go away, but now that Mass. is talking marriage, and not talking civil unions, that particular dodge is no longer operative. Within a couple of months, gays and lesbians will probably be able to get married in the state of Mass. At that point, several legal and political questions will be raised. Kerry, and the rest if they're relevant at the time, can either finesse the issue or confront it head on.
Even conservatives know that they're on the wrong side of history on this one. They're still fighting the fight, but they know they'll lose. It's a shame that, thus far, so many elected Democrats are also on the wrong side. I'm all for practical politics - noble failures are usually of little use. But, at some point, this type of politics becomes impractical
Democrats - The Party of Queers! It'll be true whether or not they deserve the slogan, so they may as well try and deserve it. It is, after all, the right thing to do.
