While Senator Barack Obama is experiencing unprecedented popularity with the media and with the left, he hasn't really talked much about his positions on issues that matter to queer, gay, lesbian, and bisexual voters. Until I read the following opinion out of The Advocate magazine, I didn't know that Obama was yet-another-Democratic-quibbler about marriage equality.
"Don't Bet On Barack" by Reverend Irene Monroe
As Rev. Irene Monroe wrote:
But, as a civil rights attorney, he [Senator Obama] ought to know that granting LGBT Americans only the right to civil unions violates our full constitutional right -- and reinstitutionalizes the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court decision Plessy v. Ferguson. As a result of that decision, the "separate but equal" doctrine became the rule of law until it was struck down in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.
On the topic of marriage equality, in their haste to embrace the "middle-ground", Democrats--including Senator Obama--forget that the "middle-ground" here is essentially Jim Crow for gays and lesbians--"separate but equal", which the Supreme Court ruled in Brown was "inherently unequal" in the sphere of race and education.
With over one thousand federal rights and privileges (not including any state rights and privileges) attendant upon marriage that are utterly denied to lesbian and gay couples, it's impossible to deny that "separate but equal" "civil unions" would not be equal--merely separate.
I was disappointed in both Senators John Kerry and John Edwards for failing to show up for the vote in the Senate on the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2004. I am similarly disappointed in Senator Obama for failing to understand that marriage equality is a civil rights issue.