CLINTON, KERRY, AND SSM: Chris Crain

Give Bill Clinton credit for his uncanny political senses. Before other angry Democrats were relying on exit polls to blame gay marriage for John Kerry's defeat on Tuesday, Bill Clinton was sounding the alarm. In a rally back home in Little Rock on the Sunday before election day, Clinton said, "Out in the country, they are wearing us out with guns and gay marriage."

Apparently that wasn't the first time the former president had expressed that sentiment. Newsweek magazine, which is coming out with a series of behind-the-scenes reports from staffers "embedded" in John Kerry's campaign, will tell how Clinton urged the Democratic nominee in a phone call to back the various state ballot initiatives banning gay marriage.

"I'm not going to ever do that," the magazine will report that Kerry told his advisers after the Clinton call. ...

The excerpt raises a number of questions. While it's gratifying to hear that Kerry wouldn't agree to gay-bait his way to the White House like his Republican opponent, the Massachusetts senator did in fact support such state amendments under certain circumstances. He vocally backed efforts to amend the Massachusetts Constitution to overturn the landmark Supreme Judicial Court ruling there. And he supported a similar measure passed by Missouri voters earlier this year.

In a longer interview published in the Blade, Kerry later clarified that he would support such statewide bans only if they allowed for civil unions as an alternative.

Even by Election Day, his campaign had failed to clarify whether that meant Kerry would only support statewide bans like the one in Massachusetts that specifically provided for civil unions; or whether he would also support bans like those passed this week in three states--Oregon, Mississippi and Montana--that did not address the availability of civil unions as an alternative institution. (Interestingly, that was ultimately President Bush's position on the statewide bans, though he revealed that break with his own party's platform almost on the sly in an interview on "Good Morning America" only two weeks before the election.)

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posted by Eve at 11:33 PM | link

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