Green Is a Color in the Rainbow

[Geee]

American Spectator:

Remember when Barack Obama bravely came out in favor of same-sex marriage before North Carolina voted on the issue? After all, Obama carried the state in 2008. The Democratic National Convention will be held there this summer. His strongest voting bloc, black Americans, was projected to vote for the pro-traditional marriage Amendment One by a 2-1 margin.

There's good reason not to remember: there was no such profile in courage moment. North Carolina passed Amendment One with 61 percent of the vote, with the president tut-tutting about his disappointment, while aides tried furiously to walk back Vice President Joe Biden's expressions of comfort with redefining marriage. Only the next day did Obama carefully and cautiously proclaim that he had found the missing link in his marriage evolution.

Indeed, the president's position was as subjective as possible: "At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married." As George Will has quipped, "If you struck from Barack Obama’s vocabulary the first-person singular pronoun, he would fall silent."

Although he has opposed defense-of-marriage ballot initiatives throughout his presidency, even while nominally against same-sex marriage, Obama left the door open to them last week. He said that the definition of marriage should be left up to the states. Where Mario Cuomo once took a stand on abortion frequently described as "personally opposed, but," Obama has pioneered the gay marriage stance "personally support, but."

"Given the impotence of his endorsement, it really comes down to one man sharing his personal opinion about a moral matter with the rest of nation," writes author and commentator Timothy Stanley. "And then making a lot of money out of it."

Follow the money. The Washington Post has reported that one in six of Obama's top campaign bundlers -- the people who raise money hand over fist from the "1 percent" for the president's reelection -- is gay. The Hollywood Reporter noted that Obama's diffidence on marriage left many rich celebrities and West Coast donors reluctant to open their wallets.