New York – One Leader Present, One Entirely Absent
(This is me, doing more of my 'obsessing on the political situation thousands of miles away' thing. Brit people, consider this cultural education 
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Late on Friday evening, the New York Senate approved a bill to make New York the largest state in the union so far to legalise same sex marriage. Governor Andrew Cuomo (champion of the legislation and one of the most unambiguously supportive straight political allies to the LGBT movement) signed the bill within hours, and thirty days from that day, same sex marriages can start being solemnised in New York State. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have seen one or two tweets referencing it...
This is the kind of positive news that the movement doesn't get every day. Indeed, it comes on the heels of more than one piece of bad news of late, including attempts to include anti-marriage constitutional amendments on more than one state's ballot this year. The final decision makes history in more than one way: due to NY State's size it more than doubles the number of Americans living in states with marriage equality, it exemplifies the shift in thinking that's taken place in the US in recent years, a similar measure two years ago having failed in the Senate, and it represents the first time a Republican-led legislature has approved marriage equality legislation. The significance of this last point cannot be understated. It was four Republican supporters who secured the passage of the bill, and according to campaigners, a sizeable proportion of funds raised for the campaign came from Republican sources. That constitutes a change in political fortune that would have seemed like a crazed fantasy even as recently as last November, when the nation saw legislatures across the country fall to the GOP on a wave of Tea Party excess and some seriously extreme positions.
Not that extreme positions were absent from the New York debate of course: The only Democratic Senator to vote against the bill was rabidly homophobic Reuben Diaz, who organised a huge rally against marriage, bussing in supporters from who-knows-where, and claiming all the while to love LGBT people (including his own granddaughter) while at the same time applauding his guest speakers, even those who announced we should all be put to death. And of course the National Organization for Marriage were there, throwing out their now well-worn mix of falsehoods and threats (their initial $1million pledged to be used against Republicans voting for the bill has been increased to $2million since Friday), alongside the international child abuse ring that calls itself the Catholic church, with Archbishop Timothy Dolan getting his panties in a right twist over the prospect of a civil government passing a law regarding a civil institution.
In all this, one figure (and one remarkable bit of timing) stands out - the President of the United States of America. Back during his presidential campaign, Barack Obama stated openly that he opposed gay marriage. He said it more than once, and in doing so provided huge capital to the proponents of Proposition 8 in California, who quoted him on the point regularly. Given that back in 1996, when running for slightly less visible office, he stated his support for gay marriage, most sensible observers have concluded that this shift is 100% politically motivated, which makes the "Yes we can" president look more like the "Yes we can if it's nothing that might affect my chances of getting elected" man. In what must have seemed like terrible timing to his handlers, in the middle of the week of uncertainly around the vote, Obama was scheduled to attend a fundraising event with LGBT supporters in New York City on Thursday evening, and massively fumbled his impossible-to-avoid comment on the subject, falling back on an "it's up to the states" formula which basically means he's absolutely okay with large numbers of LGBT Americans being barred from marriage. Worse, in reflecting on the day of his election win in 2008, he referred to it as 'a perfect night'. That's right, to an LGBT audience he called the day the Prop 8 was passed 'perfect'. Does no one who writes this man's speeches think?
And the communications delivered on his behalf are no better. A couple of weeks ago, one of his people tried to claim that the 1996 questionnaires in which he supported gay marriage were faked, though the White House press office then said that the speaker wasn't fully informed... And following the New York win, they issued a statement that claimed the president supports the idea of gay couples having the same rights as straight couples, disregarding the fact that they can only get them through marriage. Which he opposes.
The New York Times has today weighed in on the subject and made clear the stupidity of Obama's position.
Obama was supported by a lot of LGBT people, at least in part because of his claim that he would be a 'fierce advocate' for them. Andrew Cuomo promised to get marriage equality in New York, then worked the votes, found the support, worked with the campaigning and lobbying groups, and applied every bit of political capital he could; and made it happen. Obama says he doesn't actually even believe in marriage equality. There's one fierce advocate in this paragraph, and he doesn't currently live in the White House.