Kerry acknowledges gay marriage change, It only took him 11 yrs
Dina Rudick/Globe Staff
US Senator John Kerry now acknowledges he has dropped his opposition to gay marriage. During his 2004 presidential campaign, which included the stop above in Milwaukee, Kerry refused to go beyond support for civil unions.
Seven years after a presidential campaign in which he threaded the needle by explaining his support for the gay rights revolution taking place in his home state while not supporting gay marriage himself, US Senator John Kerry, a Democrat from Massachusetts, has a declaration.
He now supports gay marriage.
Kerry didn’t reveal his change of position during a news conference, like he called last week in Boston to air his views about the federal debt negotiations.
He didn’t do so in a speech on the floor of the US Senate, like he delivered with evident pride last month after Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup.
He came out, if you will, in a more inert fashion last March, when his staff answered a survey from a Globe reporter inquiring about whether members of the state’s congressional delegation favored gay marriage and the repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
An aide, relaying answers Kerry gave during a brief phone call from an international trip, said yes to both survey questions.
When a story - about how gay marriage was no longer a political wedge issue - appeared in the newspaper a week later, a condensation mistake resulted in the senator’s job title and first name being left off a sentence reading, “A Globe survey of the Massachusetts congressional delegation shows support for gay marriage and for repealing the Defense of Marriage Act by Kerry and each of the Bay State’s House members, all Democrats.”
US Senator Scott Brown, the lone Republican in the delegation, was identified as opposing both.
Kerry had little more to say on the subject until earlier this month, when he wrote an op-ed column for the Globe defending President Obama’s right to change his views on gay marriage.
The senator wrote as if his conversion not only were common knowledge, but that it was justification for giving the president the same space to make his own switch.
“Marriage is deeply personal,” he wrote in the piece, published July 10. “Our positions are based on unique combinations of reason, belief, and experience, not polling and politics. Everyone is entitled to his own view, in his own time, including the president.”
In the same column, Kerry justified what some might deride as a political flip-flop.
“Last March, when The Boston Globe asked if I supported marriage equality, I said ‘yes,’” Kerry wrote. “But in light of the increased discussion after passage of New York’s (gay marriage) law, more is required than a simple ‘yes.’ We cannot afford to be imprisoned by politics that say your views are not allowed to grow as you gain knowledge and experience.”
During an interview yesterday, Kerry acknowledged his change of heart but bristled at any suggestion he was tip-toeing into a political-180.
“What was the question? ‘Do you support gay marriage?’ What was the answer? ‘Yes,’” he said. “I mean, I can’t – I’m sorry the Globe didn’t write more about it or say something about it, but that’s not my doing. I said ‘yes.’ And then I voluntarily, spontaneously wrote an op-ed, because I thought it was important for people to understand the value of the journey that I took.”
Kerry ran for president amid a tumultuous time for gay rights, and the issue was omnipresent on the political landscape.
In November 2003, just as the coming year’s Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary campaigns were moving into a decisive phase, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court legalized gay marriage in the state.
Marriages were approved to start in May 2004, leaving the question hanging as Kerry wended his way toward the Democratic presidential nomination. The 2004 Democratic National Convention also was held in Boston, renewing the spotlight on the Massachusetts decision when the party faithful convened in late July.
Three days before the weddings began, the senator reiterated that he opposed marriage between two men or two women but favored civil unions that extended similar protections to a couple as did traditional marriage.
Harking back to his 1996 vote against the Defense of Marriage Act, which defined “marriage” as the union only of a man and a woman, Kerry said during a news conference in Washington that he favored equal rights for all.
While he opposed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage at the federal level, he said he favored a gay marriage ban at the state level in Massachusetts, as the state Legislature was considering, as long as it provided for civil unions.
Kerry said his distinction was based on his personal feelings and the teachings of his Catholic church, which still opposes gay marriage. The distinction also helped address the inherent tension between Kerry’s outreach to moderates and the necessity of maintaining support within his liberal base.
The complexity of the explanation prompted criticism from Mitt Romney, then serving as governor of Massachusetts and now the latest candidate from the state running for president. Democrats regularly lambaste the Republican for his political flip-flops, including one on another emotional social-political issue: abortion rights.
“In the case of the Massachusetts constitution, he agrees with me that we should have an amendment. On the federal Constitution, he doesn’t agree with me,” Romney said at the time. “And I think the American people are going to be just as confused as I am as to where he stands.”
During the interview yesterday, Kerry said the passage of time, a succession of gay marriages, and additional states legalizing the process have changed his personal feelings. They’ve also helped him overcome his previous concern about his church’s teachings.
“I don’t think it hurts the things I thought it would; lesson learned,” said Kerry. “You evolve with these things. You see through experience what happens. The sort of concerns I had - that somehow it would have some impact on the quality of church teaching, or that I wasn’t honoring that - I think is just not borne out by experience. Period.”
Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @globeglen.
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