Quite a lawyerly statement from the First Lady's office about gay marriage - issuing a denial/non-denial of an earlier implication that she might disagree with her husband on the issue:
“Mrs. Obama has never made any public statements about same-sex marriage,” her communications director, Kristina Schake, said in an email to POLITICO.Public statements? So has she made any private statements?
That quote from her communications director, while clearly intended to let Mrs. Obama have it both ways on marriage (maybe she a secret supporter of our equality!), seems intended to signify that she's opposed to marriage equality. As a politically connected gay friend just wrote me:
They've switched into high gear to prove that Michelle Obama is not pro-marriage. My God... what's next? Are Sasha and Malia now gonna say they believe marriage is between a man and a woman?Mrs. Obama isn't the only one trying to have it both ways. Her husband has been putting out repeated statements claiming that he is in favor of gay couples having the same rights as straight couples, then saying he is against the only means to get all the same rights, marriage. It feels awfully duplicitous. It feels like an effort to con the community into thinking he's more in favor of our equality than he is. The President simply can't be in favor of our having the same rights as straight couples if he's against marriage. It just doesn't work - there are some 1100 benefits of marriage at the federal level. The preponderance, in fact. And you can't get them without being married. So either the President is uninformed on the topic, or intentionally trying to mislead us. Neither helps to calm the nerves.
I wonder what Bo thinks.
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