President Obama lays down the gauntlet on marriage equality

Official portrait of President Obama There has been much discussion about the timing of President Obama's announced support for marriage equality, particularly that it came just after North Carolina voters approved an amendment that encoded homophobic bigotry into their state constitution. Some say the president could have made the difference by making his announcement before the vote, and while there is no evidence that even intensive active campaigning against the amendment by the president would have had any impact on the outcome, it certainly couldn't have hurt. Meanwhile, organizations of gay Republicans scoffed at the president by pointing to Dick Cheney's having come out in support of marriage equality as far back as 2009. Gay Republicans ignore the timing of Dick Cheney's announcement, which came after Dick Cheney had left political office, after Dick Cheney's political career had ended, and after Dick Cheney's approval rating had so circled the toilet bowl as to render anything said by Dick Cheney politically irrelevant. But the psychology and political rationalizations of people who are members of a political party that loathes them and actively attempts to deny them what rights they do have is beyond fathoming.

Unlike whatever Dick Cheney says about anything, the words and acts of a sitting president are relevant. A sitting president coming out in favor of marriage equality is, in fact, paradigmatic. The degree of that paradigm shift is underscored by the simple recollection that the last Democratic president instituted the homophobic and inaccurately titled Don't Ask Don't Tell and signed into law the homophobic and Orwellian titled Defense Of Marriage Act. It's fair to criticize President Obama for his opinion's "evolution" on rights that should need none, just as it's fair to criticize President Clinton for not having stood up to the homophobia of his era. Both presidents engaged in cynical political calculations, but that's not exactly unusual or unexpected. Both presidents are politicians.

Politicians engage in cynical political calculations in direct proportion to their legitimate expectations of ever being elected president. Call that Laurence's First Law of Presidential Politics. But what is significant is that President Obama now is making a very different political calculation. That his political calculation includes recognition that the polls have moved steadily and increasingly decisively in the direction of a public desire for marriage equality in no way diminishes the importance of what he has done. He is the first president ever to support marriage equality. There will be more, although no thinking person can expect any Republican presidential nominee to offer such support any time in the even distantly foreseeable future, but President Obama was the first. He deserves credit.

As for the timing of the announcement, while we can debate whether it would have made a difference if it had come before the North Carolina vote, it's also worth considering the political impact of its coming after that vote. Because the impact now may be even greater. The impact now should be national. The Democratic National Convention that will renominate President Obama will be held this summer in Charlotte, North Carolina. North Carolina is a critical swing state on which President Obama is relying for Electoral College help with his reelection. And the day after a state that is critical to his reelection encoded in its constitution homophobic bigotry, President Obama overtly challenged and criticized that vote by becoming the first president ever to declare public support for marriage equality. This was not riding the polling tide, it was bucking it. It was laying down a gauntlet. It was guaranteeing that marriage equality will be one of the defining issues of the Democratic National Convention. It was guaranteeing that marriage equality will be one of the defining issues of this election. Particularly and specifically in a swing state which the president likely will need to win in order to be reelected.

President Obama is nothing if not a shrewd political strategist, and he has made the conscious political calculation that marriage equality will be one of the defining features of what likely will be his last political campaign. From a president who often is rightly criticized by the more liberal activists in his own party, this cannot be written off as timid or centrist or detached or unwilling to engage. The overall public supports marriage equality, but in much of the country the politics remain complicated and dangerous. President Obama isn't turning away from those complications and dangers, he is seeking them. He isn't worrying whether Republicans will now try to use this as a campaign issue, he is presuming that Democrats will. His statement was personal, and it didn't even mention public policy or how to change it. But he knows that a lot of Democrats know the famous quote from President Franklin D. Roosevelt, when he met with labor leaders in 1932:

I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it.

President Obama knows that LGBT and Democratic and human rights and civil rights activists will now be galvanized to make him do what he wants to do. This issue isn't going away, and it isn't going to be off at the side in the shadows. President Obama has elevated it. He is lending to this cause the power of his office and of his unique political, intellectual and oratorical skills. He is placing this cause directly in the spotlight of the uniquely intense media focus that is our quadrennial election circus, and daring this entire nation to turn away. Which it won't. Because marriage equality finally will receive the attention it deserves, and that the very concept of human and civil rights demands.