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MsTinkerbelly · 12-23-2011, 01:48 PM

Socarides: Obama will endorse marriage equality before 2012 election
By Jacob Combs

Writing in this week’s New Yorker, Richard Socarides, who served as an advisor on LGBT issues in the Clinton administration and founded the marriage equality group Equality Matters earlier this year, predicts that President Obama will declare his support for marriage equality before the 2012 election. In doing so, he cites both Perry v. Brown and Gill v. OPM, predicting that those cases will be decided in favor of marriage equality activists in the Ninth and First Circuits, respectively. Both of those decisions are expected to be handed down in the next few months. Writes Socarides:

The remarkable new reality for Obama in this election is that supporting marriage equality is smart politics. A majority of independents and young voters already favor equal marriage rights. These are important voting blocks, and a key part of the President’s reëlection strategy. Support for gay rights will also help him energize liberals in the Party and others who think he has not acted boldly around core progressive issues such as immigration and the environment and on other civil-rights issues. Hard-right conservatives who strongly oppose marriage rights, meanwhile, will never support Obama anyway.

For most in the LGBT community, it’s not a question of if Obama will declare his support for the cause, it’s a matter of when. I will admit that when the president made his now infamous statement earlier this year that his views on gay marriage were “evolving,” I, like many others, took that as a coded message saying, ‘I’ll support it in my second term.’ (Evolution in that context meaning survival of the elected, I guess.) But Socarides’s point is well made. An Obama announcement would be great news for the cause, and either way, 2012 looks like it could shape up to be a watershed year for marriage equality in the United States.

12-23-2011, 01:48 PM	#848
MsTinkerbelly Timed Out - TOS Drama How Do You Identify?: ... Preferred Pronoun?: ... Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: ... Posts: 6,573 My Photo Gallery Thanks: 30,737 Thanked 22,908 Times in 5,019 Posts Rep Power: 0	Prop 8 Blog... Socarides: Obama will endorse marriage equality before 2012 election By Jacob Combs Writing in this week’s New Yorker, Richard Socarides, who served as an advisor on LGBT issues in the Clinton administration and founded the marriage equality group Equality Matters earlier this year, predicts that President Obama will declare his support for marriage equality before the 2012 election. In doing so, he cites both Perry v. Brown and Gill v. OPM, predicting that those cases will be decided in favor of marriage equality activists in the Ninth and First Circuits, respectively. Both of those decisions are expected to be handed down in the next few months. Writes Socarides: The remarkable new reality for Obama in this election is that supporting marriage equality is smart politics. A majority of independents and young voters already favor equal marriage rights. These are important voting blocks, and a key part of the President’s reëlection strategy. Support for gay rights will also help him energize liberals in the Party and others who think he has not acted boldly around core progressive issues such as immigration and the environment and on other civil-rights issues. Hard-right conservatives who strongly oppose marriage rights, meanwhile, will never support Obama anyway. For most in the LGBT community, it’s not a question of if Obama will declare his support for the cause, it’s a matter of when. I will admit that when the president made his now infamous statement earlier this year that his views on gay marriage were “evolving,” I, like many others, took that as a coded message saying, ‘I’ll support it in my second term.’ (Evolution in that context meaning survival of the elected, I guess.) But Socarides’s point is well made. An Obama announcement would be great news for the cause, and either way, 2012 looks like it could shape up to be a watershed year for marriage equality in the United States.