Ted Olson in Newsweek: The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage

He's a huge conservative. Was George W. Bush's Solicitor General. And now he's one of the two lawyers fighting the Prop 8 case in California. Really amazing. I'd love to know the backstory here as to how and why he got involved. His wife died in the plane that crashed into the Pentagon on September 11. I've been wondering if that hasn't influenced his thinking. From Newsweek:

Another argument, vaguer and even less persuasive, is that gay marriage somehow does harm to heterosexual marriage. I have yet to meet anyone who can explain to me what this means. In what way would allowing same-sex partners to marry diminish the marriages of heterosexual couples? Tellingly, when the judge in our case asked our opponent to identify the ways in which same-sex marriage would harm heterosexual marriage, to his credit he answered honestly: he could not think of any....

We once tolerated laws throughout this nation that prohibited marriage between persons of different races. California's Supreme Court was the first to find that discrimination unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously agreed 20 years later, in 1967, in a case called Loving v. Virginia. It seems inconceivable today that only 40 years ago there were places in this country where a black woman could not legally marry a white man. And it was only 50 years ago that 17 states mandated segregated public education—until the Supreme Court unanimously struck down that practice in Brown v. Board of Education. Most Americans are proud of these decisions and the fact that the discriminatory state laws that spawned them have been discredited. I am convinced that Americans will be equally proud when we no longer discriminate against gays and lesbians and welcome them into our society....

Citizens who have been denied equality are invariably told to "wait their turn" and to "be patient." Yet veterans of past civil-rights battles found that it was the act of insisting on equal rights that ultimately sped acceptance of those rights....

Americans who believe in the words of the Declaration of Independence, in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, in the 14th Amendment, and in the Constitution's guarantees of equal protection and equal dignity before the law cannot sit by while this wrong continues. This is not a conservative or liberal issue; it is an American one, and it is time that we, as Americans, embraced it.

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Anybody noticing the blog loading faster?

I think we may have finally solved the problem of the darn site loading so slowly. We're still testing solutions, but do you guys notice how much faster the gay site is loading? (We haven't done this yet on the main blog home page.) JOHN Read More...

Lesbian Utah legislator carrying baby for gay couple

It's a good lesson that no place is all bad. Read More...

Who will phonebank for triangulation?

I was reflecting today on Californian LGBT friends and allies who traveled or phonebanked to Nevada to work on the Obama campaign during the last election, and who did not work against Prop 8. And I was wondering if those people will be campaigning for Obama in 2012. (Not in an “I-told-you-so” way, btw, but genuinely.) I concluded that many will not, or will be much less enthusiastic about the campaign.

And then I was wondering if Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod were wondering about this, too. If they are, they seem to have come to a different conclusion than I. They have embraced a Clintonian strategy of triangulation for the Obama administration, i.e., adopting Republican policies and themes and making them their own to win over the center, while disavowing and disappointing the left, often purposely. Remember Clinton's welfare reform, which adopted key elements of Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America"? Remember Clinton's denunciation of Sister Souljah? That was Clinton's Reverend Wright moment.

To me, the Emmanuel and Axelrod approach seems to be a case of misapplied conventional political wisdom. The Obama era is not the Clinton era. Clinton did not ride a wave of youthful idealism into office, like Obama did. Obama will need every bit of that idealism to get reelected. He needs the lefty idealists to vote and to run phone banks and to knock on doors for him. He will not generate that kind of enthusiasm by triangulating on every issue important to the left – whether that issue be DADT or healthcare or climate change or whatever. Obama’s approach will not likely drive his base into the Republican party, but it will drive them into apathy. And that is one thing that Obama cannot afford.

So I ask Axelrod and Emanuel: Who will phonebank for triangulation? Read More...