by Rex Wockner
News analysis
Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is strongly against same-sex marriage and has a history of speaking against gay rights, but in the current campaign, she's attempting to strike a middle ground.
"I am not going to judge Americans and the decisions that they make in their adult personal relationships," she recently told CBS News. "I have one of my absolute best friends for the last 30 years who happens to be gay, and I love her dearly — and she is not my 'gay friend,' she is one of my best friends, who happens to have made a choice that isn't a choice that I have made, but I'm not going to judge people."
Palin, however, was judged for that comment by gay activists, who took exception to her saying that being gay is a "choice."
There also has been Internet chatter that no one can identify who Palin's lifelong lesbian pal is.
Palin likewise attempted to appear tolerant during the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate.
"If there's any kind of suggestion at all from my answer that I would be anything but tolerant of adults in America choosing their partners, choosing relationships that they deem best for themselves — you know, I am tolerant and I have a very diverse family and group of friends and even within that group you would see some who may not agree with me on this issue, some very dear friends who don't agree with me on this issue," she said. "But in that tolerance also, no one would ever propose, not in a McCain-Palin administration, to do anything to prohibit, say, visitations in a hospital or contracts being signed, negotiated between parties."
But then she stated unequivocally: "I will tell Americans straight up that I don't support defining marriage as anything but between one man and one woman, and I think through nuances we can go round and round about what that actually means. But I'm being as straight up with Americans as I can in my nonsupport for anything but a traditional definition of marriage."
Because Democratic candidates Barack Obama and Joe Biden also claim to oppose same-sex marriage, because Palin was trying to sound tolerant, and because debate host Gwen Ifill was anything but aggressive in her questioning, some debate viewers were left with the impression that there is no difference between the two teams on issues of gay equality.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Obama and Biden support giving same-sex couples all the rights of marriage — everything but the word — and oppose attempts to ban same-sex marriage in the states where it is legal.
John McCain and Palin, on the other hand, support statewide bans on same-sex marriage, do not speak in support of civil unions, and, in the final analysis, seemingly would go only so far as letting gay people visit a sick partner in the hospital and allowing them to sign private contracts to attempt to protect their relationship legally.
That's a far cry from the Democratic position in favor of granting gay couples all marriage rights under a different label.
"Do I support granting same-sex benefits?" Biden asked during the debate with Palin. "Absolutely positively. Look, in an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple."
