From his campaign bus over the weekend, here’s video of Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson clarifying his position on gay marriage.
Salon also wrote about a campaign event at which Thompson was specifically asked about homosexual “deviancy”, gay marriage, and a federal amendment banning it. Michael Scherer of The War Room notes that Thompson’s position appears to have changed:
“In the past, Thompson has opposed a federal amendment to ban gay marriage on federalist grounds. Like Arizona Sen. John McCain and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, he has said that he does not believe the federal government should be involved in an issue that should be left to the states. But on Friday, he said he would support a different type of amendment to the Constitution. “I would support a constitutional amendment which says some off-the-wall court decision in one state that recognizes the marriage in one state, like Massachusetts, just to pick a state, cannot go to another state and have it recognized in that state. You are not bound by what another state does.” He was not done. “The second part of my amendment would also state that judges could not impose this [gay marriage], on the federal or state level, unless a state legislature signed off on it.” This second part of his amendment is novel, if a bit ponderous. He has said before that he is against the federal government inserting itself into state matters like marriage. But he supports the federal government inserting itself into state courthouses, when they take up the issue of marriage. He did not immediately explain this conflict.”
DocGonzo at DailyKos offered his analysis: “My analysis: these Republican spokesmodels don’t care about gay marriage, gay people, Iowans, the Constitution, or anything else. They care about grabbing power, no matter what they say or do to get and keep it. Thompson is the worst kind of bigot: the opportunist bigot who doesn’t even care who he hates or persecutes. Those kind are the hardest to catch and break, because they can melt into any background when bigotry is inconvenient.”
And AmericaBlog notes a resemblance between Thompson and a villain from Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.
