Andrew Sullivan: …. the same can be said of marriage equality in Maryland, where extreme rhetoric in the debate turned some previously anti-gay marriage legislators around. The NYT reports on the muted response of the GOP’s potential presidential candidates to the Obama administration’s decision not to defend Section 3 of DOMA in the courts. I don’t for a minute believe that the Christianist base will be satisfied if the House decides to let sleeping gays lie, but the feeling is different now, don’t you think?
The genius of the Holder decision is that it forces the GOP to decide very quickly whether to double-down on this issue.
It’s the last thing Boehner wants to be thinking or talking about. And Obama has wisely restricted his shift to the federal government’s recognition of what states have already done. In other words, Obama’s decision can be viewed as a federalist one…
Meanwhile, the gays are ecstatic – a little too ecstatic in my view. Not to say I am not extremely gratified by the DOJ’s decision. Just that I recognize its limits. As Obama used to say: no sudden moves. But his legacy on gay rights is beginning to build into a historic one. Yes, I have complained loudly in the past. My loyalty is to the issue, not the president. But he is coming through – more cunningly than most of us grasped.
Which is not the first time one can say that on many issues, where Obama’s caution and incrementalism have begun to create a legacy that is deeply unsatisfying in the present but looks rather substantive from the rear-view mirror.
Full article here
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I’d never lump Sullivan in with the increasingly hysterical Greenwald – you know, the obsessive promoter of the Julian Assange Cult of Personality (an Assangenaut, if you like). He almost praised the President, incidentally, for his DOMA decision in his latest interminable rant, but he largely opted – surprise! – to spew bile again. Truly, this guy makes your average ‘Obama = Hitler’ banner-wielding Teabagger seem reasoned, ‘fair and balanced’.
…..but, Sullivan has really got to make his mind up: is President Obama a sell-out not worthy of his support any more (as he wrote recently), or is he is a President who is “coming through – more cunningly than most of us grasped”? And one whose “legacy on gay rights is beginning to build into a historic one”?
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