Kevin Drum makes the case that Obama owes us a little bit of audacity in standing up against the plan to write a ban on gay marriage into the California Constitution. But Kevin acknowledges that doing so would be risky.
I think it would be a lot less risky if Obama — who has already made a statement against Proposition 8 but hasn’t done anything beyond that — made another statement, or an ad, pointing out that if the initiative passes it would retroactively un-marry thousands of couples, and stressing the sheer cruelty of shredding those vows of mutual fidelity by political fiat. Obama could then say what he’s said before: that, precisely because marriage is a sacred institution, it’s a violation of religious liberty for the state to define what it is, or isn’t, and that all committed couples ought to enjoy precisely the same legal status.