Primer: Gay Marriage 2012

I didn’t want to talk about gay marriage because, frankly, I don’t care. But the issue is having some fascinating ramifications, especially with Newsweek calling Obama our first gay president. Here are some things you may or may not realize yet.

● My Position: Before we begin, allow me to remind you of my positions on gay marriage: I am opposed to it on Libertarian grounds. To allow gay marriage would be to force people to accept something to which they are philosophically and morally opposed. Whether they are right or not, the government should not do that (LINK). And no, I don’t believe for a minute that an exception can be made to exempt people with philosophical or religious objections because those exceptions get undermined, as is happening in Britain (LINK). That said, I do believe this issue is lost (LINK), especially as this is a generational issue. However, we’re not there yet and, interestingly, Obama’s recent decision to (fake)embrace gay marriage is causing significant blowback. Observe. . .

● Whoops: Obama’s stance is not going doing well with his own troops or with independents. Five Senators facing re-election in conservative or battleground states have refused to back Obama’s mealy position: Sens. Jon Tester (Mont.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Joe Machin (W. byGod Va.), Bob Casey (Pa.) and Bill Nelson (Fla.). Imagine that! These people are so scared of the issue that they won’t even take Obama’s toothless copout of feigning support for the issue in the abstract while wringing their hands that there is nothing they can do about it.

What this tells us is that gay marriage is highly unpopular in these states. And that means Obama’s stance has hurt him in Pennsylvania and Florida, both of which could be key states depending on how things go. And if Pennsylvania goes against Obama, so will Ohio. . . and Wisconsin. Heck, even in unionized Michigan, Obama only leads by 5% -- 45% to 40%.

More evidence for this self-inflicted harm comes from a recent Gallup poll, which found that 23% of independents say Obama’s gay-marriage stance will make them less likely to vote for him, while only 13% say it will make them more likely to vote for him. That’s a 2-1 split, which mimics all the other polls which show that independents are breaking against Obama by a wide margin. This was a mistake.

● Whoops II: Interestingly, the one person to really benefit from Obama’s gay marriage stance has been Romney. By simply repeating his opposition to gay marriage, Romney has given evangelicals an opportunity to jump on his bandwagon and they’ve done so with gusto. A recent poll showed that evangelicals support him by 67% to 22% over Obama. And that actually understates the support because that includes black evangelicals, who support Obama 94% to 6%. When they are factored out, Romney’s popularity among white evangelicals rises to 82% (up from 40% in October). So much for evangelicals sitting this one out.

● Whoops III: Now comes an interesting question. I wonder if Obama hasn’t killed gay marriage with his announcement? Here’s the thing. Gay marriage has always been a tricky issue for the Democrats. It’s pretty clear that gay marriage will win over the public in the near future. But until that time, offering support for gay marriage is career suicide outside of the big liberal states. So Democrats have needed to walk a fine line of offering enough support to make gays think they support them, without offering enough support to anger the public.

This has resulted in the strategy of getting gay marriage passed in the liberal states and then using that as a wedge to get the Federal government to impose gay marriage on the conservative states. That way, the Democrats in the conservative states can claim they had no hand in it. So far, that’s worked really well for them since the only alternative position was the one espoused by conservatives of total opposition to gay marriage.

But Obama just created a third alternative. He said that you could support gay marriage in principal, yet believe the issues must be decided by the states.

Think about this. What’s he done is create an out (no pun intended). Democrats all over the heartland can now proudly proclaim their 100% support for gay marriage while simultaneously claiming that their love and respect for the voters of their state, who don’t want it, prevents them from supporting it locally. This is the perfect evasion. And on a hot-button issue, politicians seek evasions.

I think Obama’s stance has set the gay marriage movement back for decades to come as Democrats will now abandon the all-or-nothing game and will latch onto, “yes, but not for us” position. This means gay marriage is unlikely to spread much beyond the handful of states which already allow it (currently, 12 states prohibit same-sex marriage by statute and 30 prohibit it in their constitution).

If I’m right, Obama won’t be remembered as the first gay President as Newsweek just declared, he will go down in history as the man who nearly killed the gay marriage movement. Interesting.

● Predictionmania!!: Finally, Rand Paul will be president one day. You heard it here first. Here’s my thinking. Ron Paul is leaving politics after decades of jousting at windmills. But believe it or not, he’s had some stunning success in the past 5-8 years in reshaping the economics of the Republican Party and he’s left a huge movement looking for an heir. Rand Paul is well suited to claim that mantle. But that movement has never been able to deliver Paul the nomination because Ron Paul’s Libertarianism scares the hell out of Social Conservatives, so why would this help Rand Paul? Because Rand Paul is different. Unlike Ron Paul, Rand has been staking out social conservative positions. On the gay marriage issue, for example, he came out solidly opposed to gay marriage and he did so by mentioning the Bible and saying we should not “give up our traditions. We’ve got 6,000 years of tradition.” Then he spoke of the need for “traditionalists” to save the Republic by defending the family. Said Paul:

“We’ve introduced the Life at Conception Act, the Pro-Life Act, the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, I’m also co-sponsor of the Human Life Amendment. I’ve also been trying to defund Planned Parenthood. Anybody here for that?”

What Paul is doing is claiming Ron Paul’s economic mantle while simultaneously flirting with social conservatives. This is a truly winning strategy if he can pull it off, and I suspect he can. Unless Paul makes a mistake by going off a deep end somewhere, I would say he’s someone to watch as a Presidential candidate in 2020 or 2024.