Things might get awkward for President Obama in New York Tuesday. As North Carolinians cast their votes in what is expected to be another successful attempt by gay marriage opponents to ban same-sex unions and his own campaign works to clarify its position after Vice President Joe Biden indicated support for marriage equality on Sunday, Obama travels to a state that recently legalized gay marriage, and plans to meet with one of the movement’s biggest heroes, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
If the past is any judge, Obama will once again brush off any questions about his own position on gay marriage and instead point to victories for the gay-rights community that happened on his watch.
But Obama’s insistence that is views on gay marriage are “evolving” is becoming a tougher and tougher sell thanks to a series of events putting pressure on him to step off the fence and into one of the most contentious civil rights debates of the new millenium.
Recent developments in the gay marriage fight make it tougher for Obama to keep up his have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too routine. A timeline:
⢠February
A marriage equality group, Freedom To Marry, launched a petition drive aimed at getting a plank supporting gay marriage into the Democratic Party platform this fall.
The group quickly landed a big supporter, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi.
⢠March
With the selection of Los Angeles Mayor Anthony Villaraigosa as convention chair, the movement picked up another prominent Democratic pro-marriage equality voice. In March, he called on the party to include a gay marriage plank in its platform. A slew of Democratic senators followed, putting the Obama campaign in an uncomfortable position.
“There’s a process. There’s not even a delegate platform committee yet,” Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said at the time. “There’s a process to go through this discussion and the DNC will go through that, and we will have a platform.”
Maryland passed a marriage equality law, that Gov. Martin O’Malley (D), who as chairman of the Democratic Governors Association is a prominent Obama booster, signed into law.
The law launched O’Malley into the national conversation, as speculation started to swirl that he might make an appealing presidential candidate in 2016. (The same went for Cuomo when he signed marriage equality into law in 2011.)
The warm reception for O’Malley and Cuomo led gay rights activists to step up the pressure on Democrats to back gay marriage. New York, they said, showed that a politician isn’t taking a political risk by supporting the increasingly popular idea of marriage equality.
“We know for sure that having leaders, policy makers and legislators that are leaders on this issue does not negatively impact their ability to be in their roles of leadership,” Darlene Nipper, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, told TPM. “People continue to vote for them. People continue to support them.”
⢠April
As the debate over North Carolina’s Amendment One — which would ban legal recognition for same-sex couples — heated up with television ads opposing the legislation, Obama took a stand against the referendum.
Obama’s fine line was on display: The president expressed concern about what the legislation could do, but did not say he supports same-sex marriage.
“The president has long opposed divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same-sex couples,” an Obama spokesperson told reporters in late March. “That’s what the North Carolina ballot initiative would do — it would single out and discriminate against committed gay and lesbian couples — and that’s why the president does not support it.”
⢠May
Biden turned the pressure up even higher with an appearance on “Meet the Press” in which he appeared to go further than the president in openly supporting marriage equality.
That sent the Obama campaign scrambling, and led Republicans to start using Obama’s “evolving” position to chip away at his image as a straight shooter.
Most Democratic observers don’t expect Obama to take a stand on the issue before the election, and believe likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney will stay firmly opposed to marriage equality.
