Some Advisers Believe Obama Will Eventually Come All The Way on Gay Marriage
Secretary Jay Carney knows what the question will be before he even calls on Chris Johnson at White House press briefings.
Johnson is the reporter for the Washington Blade who broke the news this week that Elizabeth Warren wants President Obama to support gay marriage.
At briefings, he asks Carney the same thing almost every time: What’s going on with the president and gay marriage?
Johnson invariably phrases it differently – How’s the evolution going? Will it be done before November 2012? Is his faith playing a role? But it’s all the same query.
And every time, Carney offers basically the same response – I have no new news for you, Chris.
“That's a circuitous way of asking the same question, and I just don't have any updates for you on the President's position,” he told Johnson after the most recent query.
Perhaps in frustration, Johnson has taken to chronicling gay marriage support elsewhere and using it to try and leverage more information from the White House. Or more evolution.
Warren, a former special assistant to the president who is now running for Senate in Massachusetts, told Johnson in the exclusive interview that she wants the president’s position to evolve because she believes “marriage equality is morally right.” A few weeks ago, he got 22 senators on the record calling for a gay marriage plank in the Democratic Party platform.
"It's a very important issue," Johnson said Thursday. "Our readers are eager to hear about the progress of President Obama's evolution on same-sex marriage because they want his support in their pursuit of the right to marry. Many hope an announcement will come before the election."
Unfortunately, Johnson didn’t get to ask Carney yet about the president’s response to Warren’s entreaty. The president as traveling on Wednesday and Thursday so there were no press briefings at the White House.
Politico.com
Some advocates are pushing Obama to come out for marriage equality before the election. From a political standpoint, they say Obama has much to gain by coming out for marriage because it would energize the Democratic Party’s progressive base. They say he has little to lose because those who would vote against Obama for supporting same-sex marriage would vote against him anyway.
John Aravosis, editor of AMERICAblog, said an endorsement from Obama of marriage equality would better distinguish him from the Republican presidential candidates, who oppose same-sex marriage.
“It never hurts them with progressives to remind them that Obama is better than Romney on a lot of our issues,” Aravosis said.
Aravosis added that if advocates are successful in their push for including an endorsement of same-sex marriage in the Democratic Party platform when the platform committee convenes in September, the result could create a thorny issue for the president just before Election Day.
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