gay marriage

Charlotte
Cory Booker won’t say if he’s running for governor of New Jersey, but when I ask if he’s going to challenge Republican governor Chris Christie next year at the Democrats’ LGBT caucus meeting Thursday afternoon, he answers with a nervous laugh.

Last week, at the beach with my family, I deliberately ignored all newspapers. Not for the reason most people do—because print is dead. But because whenever I’m surrounded by salt -water, steamed crabs, and even mediocre fishing, I tend to hold that true happiness is having no idea what chronically bothered people are talking about.

Google yesterday reportedly launched a worldwide gay rights campaign, officially beginning in Poland and Singapore.

Christopher Caldwell, writing in the Financial Times: 

So Batman is gay. Well, maybe.

The comic book world freaked out today because Dan DiDio, the head of DC Comics, now says that in June his company is going to turn one of the publisher’s big, legacy characters gay.

Since Obama’s flip flop on gay marriage earlier this month (he supported it in 1996, before opposing it for 8 years starting in 2004), there has been a lot of talk about whether he will lose support with African Americans in the fall. African American voters, after all, are both a core Democratic constituency and pretty strong opponents of gay marriage. So, will the president pay a price?

Last Friday, Gallup released a poll showing the country almost evenly divided on Obama's gay marriage endorsement, but 26% of Americans said Obama's move made them more likely to vote against him while 13% said it made them more likely to vote for him. By a 12-point margin, independents said they were more likely to vote against Obama because of his endorsement of gay marriage.

When President Obama came out last week in favor of redefining marriage, he couched his opinion in the context of federalism, saying, “I think it is a mistake to — try to make what has traditionally been a state issue into a national issue.” During that same interview, however, he declared that a bipartisan law designed to protect states from judges who redefine marriage in other states, is “unconstitutional.” It’s very hard to square these two statements.

The White House announced that President Barack Obama will be fundraising with Ricky Martin. Martin, who is gay, came out of the closet on his own website almost a year ago.

In the early 1980s, Midge Decter famously explained to an acquaintance surprised by her unapologetic embrace of American conservatism, “There comes a time to join the side you’re on.” One could say that last week President Obama followed—as so many of us have!—in Midge’s footsteps. He joined the side he’s on.

Gallup took a poll of adults regarding Obama's endorsement of gay marriage, and the topline number seems* to look good for the president: 51% approve of Obama's support of same-sex marriage, while 45% disapprove.

Now that President Obama has announced that, having been for gay marriage (in 1996) before he was against it (in 2004 and 2008), he’s now for it again (in 2012), the Wall Street Journal editorial board comes perilously close to suggesting that Mitt Romney should change his position on the issue.