"It is time for the president to come out of the closet."

Maureen Dowd, Sunday Times:

...But for the president, “the fierce urgency of now” applies only to getting checks from the gay community, not getting up to speed with all the Americans who think it’s time for gay marriage.

As with “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” Obama is not leading the public, he’s following. And worse, the young, hip black president who was swept in on a gust of change, audacity and hope is lagging behind a couple of old, white conservatives — Dick Cheney and Ted Olson.

As a community organizer, Obama developed impressive empathetic gifts. But now he is misusing them. It’s not enough to understand how everybody in the room thinks. You have to decide which ones in the room are right, and stand with them. A leader is not a mediator or an umpire or a convener or a facilitator.

With each equivocation, the man in the Oval Office shields his identity and cloaks who the real Barack Obama is. He should draw inspiration from the gay community: one thing gays have to do, after all, is declare who they are at all costs. On some of the most important issues facing this nation, it is time for the president to come out of the closet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/opinion/sunday/26dowd.html?_r=1&ref=maureendowd

:thumbsup:

He wants it both ways for the political benefits.

It's good she wrote this if only because it thoroughly mainstreams the conversation. People in Washington pay attention to her -- often that's not a good thing, but in this case it is.

He says: “You think it’s going to stop with this? You think now bigamists are going to want their rights to marry? You think somebody that wants to marry his sister is going to now say, ‘I have a right’? I mean, it’s the same principle, isn’t it?”

Tim, Maybe we should just ban marriage all-together. That way we'll have no more divorce.

K&R