I realize this is old news now. But I took GG to task earlier for saying that Obama "adopted the lie" of unprovoked Russian agression without providing evidence. GG suggested I had not read the transcript he linked to, but in fact I had. Obama does not "agree with everything McCain said," as GG put it. He said he agreed with many of the steps McCain thought ought to happen. There is nowhere in that transcript, or anything else GG has linked to, where Obama "adopts" the position that Russia was an unprovoked agressor. What he does is fail to challenge McCain's position, and my objection is that this is not "adopting the lie," as GG puts it.

Glenn, you normally don't play quite so fast and loose with the facts. But on this issue for some reason you are so enamored with the Russian position it seems to get in the way of your thinking. It's a little bizarre.

August 11:

While returning to a pre-August 8th military posture is a necessary first step towards resolving this crisis, we cannot tolerate the unacceptable status quo that led to this escalation. That means Russian peacekeeping troops should be replaced by a genuine international peacekeeping force, Georgia should refrain from using force in South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and a political settlement must be reached that addresses the status of these disputed regions.

I loathe DOMA. It is the thing I will never forgive Bill Clinton for signing that piece of garbage into law (and then crowing about it in his campaign). But... as you at least suggest at the end, GG, Obama needs to tackle other issues first. The economy, the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan, the erosion of our civil liberties. I want to see him take the political capital he has earned and make it grow by doing great things for our country first...then tackle an issue like DOMA. As much as I despise it when people tell us in the LGBT community to "wait" on achieving equality -- and I do despise it -- I want Obama to be successful. It does us no good for him to jump right on this and go down in flames (a la Clinton -- his foray into the military only made matters worse for us).

I never quite know how to react to posts like yours. The idea that the state's recognition of gay marriage would require churches to perform them is, in a word, ludicrous. All it really takes is a moment's thought to know this is true. For example, it's obviously the case that people are free as a matter of state law to marry as many times as they please, provided they get a divorce first. Does this mean that the Catholic Church -- assuming they still find remarriage after divorce to be abhorrent (I honestly don't know the dogma on this anymore) -- is thereby forced to marry divorcees in their church? Of course not. It's obvious they are not. It is a ridiculous argument. There is a First Amendment in this country, you know.

The reason that I never quite know how to react is that the anti-gay bigots, like the Mormons, spend a hell of a lot of money to convince people that this is a real possibility. And obviously, with certain low-information voters like psthomso, that has some effect. My ire is mostly at the people who would take advantage of their ignorance, not at the ignorant themselves.

Those are much more politically difficult goals than changing DOMA.

I wonder if that's really true. You may be right. But going back and revisiting the MCA can be framed as a repudiation of Bush's excesses, in a way that of course DOMA cannot. And if there's anything that the electorate spoke clearly on this election, it's the repudiation of Bush.

That's not to minimize the political difficulties attendant to issues like the MCA, of course.

What I'd really like to see Obama push for early on is ENDA (i.e., federal protection against sexual orientation discrimination in employment). It avoids the whole same-sex marriage issue and gets directly at fairness and elimination of discrimination in a way that I think now has overwhelming support.

Not that one can't do both, of course, which obviously I'd eventually like to see.

You know, contrary to what some folks seem to think, "marriage" is a civil legal term, with a pretty well-defined meaning in the law. It also happens to be a religious term, but that doesn't mean that it is not also a perfectly valid nonreligious legal concept.

I understand the thought that calling same-sex unions something else like "civil unions" seems politically more palatable, but face it: if you've already got a well-defined legal term to cover the relationship, why is it that you don't just use that term? I'll tell you why: to signify that somehow same-sex relationships aren't worthy of that term. Well, that's wrong. Flat wrong.

And folks, this has consequences. An example: the lesbian couple from Rhode Island who went to Vermont and got a "civil union." After a while their relationship soured and they wanted to dissolve the relationship. None of the Rhode Island courts would touch it, though, because in their view they only had jurisdiction to dissolve a "marriage." Now, if they want to get divorced, they have to move to Vermont and establish residence. It's a nightmare for them, and all because they're not "married."

Can you imagine if, after the Civil War, when we finally got around to making blacks citizens, people had said, oh, we have to come up with another name for it now because everyone knows blacks can't be "citizens"? They'll have the same rights, of course, but who cares what we call it? I hope everyone here would see the bigotry of that position.