President Obama has already done more to advance LGBT rights than any prior president. After the first Republican presidential debate, where the frontrunners nearly trampled each other racing to the pinnacle of intolerance, I’m fairly certain I’ll vote for him again. I wish, though, that he would quit telling us that he is “evolving” on marriage equality. He’s not, and the proof is his own words.
Evolution is the culmination of random and unplanned changes in organisms and the environment that promotes the survival of those best adapted to their surroundings. DNA gets mutated. Meteors crash into the earth. The first fish to leave the waters for land could not ponder how many more gill mutations would be needed to breathe air. Nor did they determine if the ambient oxygen would support them. The waters receded, and those with the best primitive lungs survived.
True evolution precludes the possibility that you can be aware of it and plan for it. In other words, a politician who says he is evolving on an issue can’t be. Evolving on marriage equality would be better anthropomorphized by a politician who was staunchly opposed to marriage equality, woke up to a poll showing his constituents in support, and found to his shock that he, unlike his conservative colleagues, could find it in himself to change his vote. Like the fish with the best lungs, he could take a deep breath and begin to dominate the landscape.
Each time President Obama claims to be evolving, he reminds us that changes in his stance will be anything but random or unplanned. Further, he has a fair amount of sway in the political environment. His manipulation of both variables suggests that the president is timing his progression on marriage equality with a goal in mind, making his actions more akin to “intelligent design”, a theory repackaging creationism to include the fossil record as part of a designer’s plan. Unfortunately, the prospect that his main goal is marriage equality has as little factual support as the “intelligent design” proposition.
True, there was a time when we feared that a president taking a stand could further an amendment to the U.S. Constitution banning same-sex marriage. That time was 2006, when President Bush, whose stance was against marriage equality, couldn’t get the amendment through a Republican Congress. Instead, we still have the Defense of Marriage Act, which is dying a (too) slow death in the courts, as they remind us that the federal government actually has little to say about marriage.
There was also a time when making same-sex marriage a national issue might energize opponents, leading states to legislatively or constitutionally ban it. That time has similarly passed. With the addition of New York, six states and the District of Columbia now allow same-sex marriage. Forty-one states ban it. Given the potential benefits of a presidential endorsement of marriage equality, fear of action in New Mexico, Rhode Island and New Jersey (which already allows civil unions) is a poor excuse to straddle the fence of equality.
More likely, President Obama has designs on a second term. Even for that goal, it’s hard to prove his stance is intelligent. Politicians supporting marriage equality have overwhelmingly been re-elected. When they haven’t, it has usually been for other reasons. With a majority of Americans in favor of same-sex marriage, it seems like a good stance to have, though Vice President Gore might point out that the popular vote doesn’t carry the Electoral College.
Still the electoral math looks good for marriage equality. The states that allow same-sex marriage or recognize same-sex relationships in some way yield 211 electoral votes. Add another 50 votes from states that have not gone for a Republican presidential candidate in more than 20 years: Rhode Island (1984), Minnesota (1972), Michigan (1988) and Pennsylvania (1988). At 261, President Obama would only need Florida, Ohio, Virginia or North Carolina to win – another situation Vice President Gore would understand. He lost those states in 2000, but President Obama won them all in 2008.
One last thing about evolution: it tends to be an iterative process moving in one direction. Despite stops, steps back and dead ends, it is rare that less “evolved” creatures leap-frog the better adapted. That makes me wonder how Vice President Cheney, First Lady Laura Bush and Solicitor General Ted Olsen could adapt to marriage equality before President Obama, particularly given his signature of support on a questionnaire in 1996.
Liberal activists are calling on President Obama to “Evolve already,” but it’s not about evolution. It’s about choice. The choice to be the first president to support marriage equality, or to be the last president consumed by a failing war on the LGBT community. Mr. President, choose already!
