Editorials and Opinions

Georgetowner • June 18, 2012

There has been a lot of media head-scratching, pondering, pandering and pontification, and deep thinking about a so-called culture of corruption in District of Columbia politics.

You can hardly blame folks for thinking along those lines: I mean, look what’s happened. Just last week, after a lengthy investigation into his financial activities, District Council Chairman Kwame Brown resigned his position and pleaded guilty to a felony bank fraud charge and a misdemeanor charge.

Earlier, the federal investigation into Mayor Vincent Gray’s mayoral campaign, produced two guilty pleas from campaign aides for making illegal campaign contributions to a third and minor candidate, which has been the subject of investigations since almost the beginning of Gray’s term. The federal investigation is still in progress, resulting in a gloomy, expectant political atmosphere about what else may be coming. Everyone is hearing the sound of shoes dropping.

In the spring, Ward 5 Councilman Harry Thomas, Jr., pleaded guilty to embezzling $350,000 of money meant for nonprofit youth programs and was sentenced to three years in prison by a federal judge.

The name of former “mayor for life” Marion Barry, now and perhaps for always Ward 8 Councilman came up often in discussions. Barry, after all, went to jail on a single drug charge after a tumultuous, divisive trial and then returned to become mayor yet again.

People are now talking about all of that as if it was one big bag of bad coals, a black mark for D.C. politics. There are fears that Congress will take up its anti-D.C. cudgel again and beat down home rule.

It’s always trendy to see trends where none exist. But let’s take a look at things. Mayor Barry’s history in this city—and it’s a history of great accomplishments as well as transgressions, past and continuing —is fit subject for a novel, but not any part of a trend.

Vincent Gray’s election was supposed to be about bringing the city together: “One City,” remember? But his problems are about his election, or more accurately, his election campaign. What we know is that his aides, at the very least, lacked any sort of respect for the electoral process and were none too sharp in how they went about it, enlisting a known political loose cannon to assist them.

The acts of Brown and Thomas destroyed two promising political careers and the faith their communities had in them. It’s not fair, however, to suggest that what has happened—and that includes Barry—is indicative of the D.C. political culture, which grew out of the late arrival of home rule in the 1970s. The city was lucky, in fact, to have for a first mayor a man like Walter Washington, who had size, common sense and authority to which every D.C. candidate for anything ought to aspire.

We’ve had what were basically successful terms as mayor by Anthony Williams, the sometimes maligned but very pragmatic, effective and even visionary mayor, who changed the D.C. landscape in his two terms. Williams was not especially popular with the public, but won two terms easily, in spite of not having a natural gift for politics.

There are plenty of good and fine people on the current council, as there have been in the past—chairpersons like John Wilson, Linda Cropp, David Clarke, and Gray, the popular Republican Carol Schwartz, Bill Lightfoot, Hilda Mason, and others, none of whom came close to dishonoring their offices.

So, we should get a grip. We might remember one other thing, besides the problems of lacking statehood: It’s that often you get the government you deserve. And when you repeatedly have miniscule and embarrassing voter turnouts that send individuals to the council, or to high office, then maybe the results that we see now should not be so surprising. ?

Georgetowner •

The setting was dramatic and unexpected. Mayor Vincent Gray with neighborhood and Georgetown University leaders next to him announcing that peace was at hand in the on-going G.U. Campus Plan debate. They stood on P Street, a block from the campus. After two months of negotiations, the plan was revised with agreement from all sides. The fight was over. Again, unexpected.

“I firmly believe that we have developed a proposal that will go a long way towards alleviating many of the adverse impacts we experience living in such close proximity to the university,” said Jennifer Altemus, president of the Citizens Association of Georgetown. “This is a genuine compromise whereby neither side got 100 percent of what it wanted, but we are all pleased with the outcome.”

Key details include moving more students onto the main campus (at least 450 students); a new Georgetown Community Partnership, comprised of neighborhood and university representatives; a push to make the campus more attractive to students with a new student center or pub and a policy to make it easier for in-dorm parties; moving the School of Continuing Studies to a new downtown campus (not yet found); capping the undergrad headcount at 6,675.

Also on the list for the future: a new 100-acre campus, supposedly for most of the university’s graduate programs. Ditto: Finding housing graduate students outside Georgetown, Burleith and Foxhall.

For some students, the phrase used by CAG — “Living off-campus will be a privilege not a right” — is troublesome. They should be aware that it is up to the university to enforce such a restriction and not the city.

As for the dramatic, it came from an unexpected source, Ron Lewis, chairman of Advisory Neighborhood Commission 2E, who said: “This is an extraordinary event in the life of our community, and it’s very promising. We have found a way — the community and the university, together — that offers a new cooperative spirit and real results on issues that have divided us for years.”

Mayor Gray added to the dramatic and to what will now be expected: “What they have done is developed a prototype and set a precedent for how these issues are to be dealt with in the future.”

Something dramatic clicked in the heads of those involved, and we have yet to sit down with the expert in “alternative dispute resolution.” But it is also gratifying to see that some of the advice issued on this matter in these pages over the last year have been taken to heart. Whether it was that the university think beyond its own bubble as well as the neighborhood appreciating the college presence and its benefits and drop the demand for all undergraduates to live on the campus, we cannot be sure.

We do know that a line of cooperation has been joined and should not be cut and that the university’s motto — “Utraque Unum” — translated as “both and one” moves in the background as a guide to this new relationship between town and gown.?

Jack Evans •

Given recent events and the attendant media scrutiny on the Council, I wanted to take a moment to highlight some of the positive things our government is doing and assure you all that I will continue to work hard for my constituents and the city as a whole. On Tuesday, June 5, the Council had its second and final vote on the Budget Support Act, and I think that it was a definitive improvement over last year’s budget and I want to highlight a few areas of interest.

First, I was pleased that this year’s budget proposal included no tax increases. One of the primary reasons I was unable to support last year’s budget was the inclusion of unnecessary tax increases to support our ever-expanding government. I believe the Mayor and my colleagues should find efficiencies within the agencies they oversee rather than asking our residents to pay continually higher taxes in the face of a recession. We are the only local government in the country to continue to pass the largest budget in our history every year despite the economic slowdown.

Within my committee, for example, I was able, in consultation with our Chief Financial Officer, to identify millions of dollars of unallocated funding through savings achieved in the Gallery Place tax increment refinancing. I was pleased to allocate some of these funds toward enhanced arts programming, which fills a gap in our public education system and supports our small business community. I also recommended additional funding toward marketing dollars that encourages additional tourism in the District. Studies have shown that both of these uses of government funds generate several dollars in new tax revenues for each dollar spent, which increases the pool of money we have for other items of importance to me, such as our libraries, parks, public safety, and education.

Another very positive development is that we were able to push back the implementation of the municipal bond tax another year. If you recall, the initial bond tax proposal initially considered last year would have been retroactive to interest earned on or after January 1, 2011. This was a shocking and unfair proposal. After some amendments, the tax was subsequently set to go into effect for interest earned on or after January 1, 2012, to be included in one’s tax filing in the spring of 2013 if a taxpayer files on an annual basis. As a result of the fiscal year 2012 supplemental budget bill, which we also passed on Tuesday, we were able to push back implementation an additional year, to interest earned beginning January 1, 2013, for inclusion in your tax filing in the spring of 2014. This is great in and of itself, as it provides relief for another year of this tax, and it also gives us another opportunity to seek to fully repeal the tax in next year’s budget prior to it taking effect. While I was disappointed that the municipal bond tax was not fully repealed in the budget, particularly after I had identified approximately $800,000 of the $1.1 million necessary for this repeal within my own committee, I am still hopeful for full repeal the next time we revisit the budget.

Thank you for all your letters of support during this difficult time, and let me again commit to you that our work will remain uninterrupted as we move forward with selecting an interim Council Chair pending a special election. ?

John Fenzel • June 13, 2012

In private sideline conversations between
principals during the G-8 summit meeting at
Camp David, some significant decisions were
made that will impact the long-term fate of the
European Union over the coming weeks and
months.

Those conversations centered on the decision
to plunge ahead with the bailout of the
European banks in an effort to save the Euro
system, with Greece still inside. The prime
influencers behind this decision were Managing
Director of the International Monetary Fund
Christine Lagarde and President Obama. Both
Lagarde and Obama are concerned that if Greece
leaves the Euro, the contagion will spread to
Spain, Portugal, Ireland, and, perhaps, even
Italy. President Obama’s unspoken motivation
in preventing a financial meltdown of the Euro
system is the possibility that it would almost certainly
spill over into Wall Street and adversely
affect the U.S. economy.

Christine Lagarde put the IMF squarely
behind a bailout of the European banks, with
the full backing of the U.S. Federal Reserve and
Treasury to boost the leveraged lending of the
European Central Bank (ECB) to prop up the
European banks. The ECB will likely take junk
bonds and other vastly over-priced assets as collateral
for loans to the Spanish, Greek and other
European banks—a move that will offset an
additional estimated $500 billion in new writeoffs
by bondholders of Greek debt.

So, the IMF, the Obama Administration
and the ECB appear to have colluded to further
delay the reality of the financial and banking
crisis through what are–by any measure–very
risky, hyperinflationary measures. From the
Obama Administration’s perspective, however,
the strategy will have succeeded as the crisis is
effectively postponed, taking many months to
fully play out (versus days or weeks), well past
the November elections in the United States.

In his sideline meeting with new French
President Francois Hollande, President Obama
reached a full agreement on this perpetuation of
the Euro. This is an area where Hollande and
German Chancellor Angela Merkel will agree
to disagree. They both want to defend the Euro,
but Hollande will continue to insist that austerity
must be limited and a growth program initiated.
While the feasibility of such a dual-track program
is questionable at best, it is nonetheless the
growing agenda of the Euro-socialists, including
Hollande, Germany’s Social Democratic Party
and the Italian Socialist Party. A majority of
Greek voters are in favor of staying in the Euro,
so long as the austerity is reduced.

Hollande will make continued efforts to push
for Euro bonds as one way to implement this
bailout plan. Merkel will continue to oppose and
block the Euro bond argument. Merkel recently
told her party that “under no circumstances”
would she agree to a Euro bond strategy.

“A Euro bond would take a few years to
implement because there are lots of technical
issues to solve and also implementation of the
Euro bond procedure would take several years,”
Finnish Prime Minister Jyrki Katainen says. “So
Euro bond[s] are not a solution for this current
crisis,”

The total amount of assets on the books
of the US Federal Reserve and the European
Central Bank, combined, fall well short of the
currently estimated 4 trillion Euro liability of
the European private banks—something that
U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner is
acutely aware of.

Treasury said, in a written statement, that
Katainen and Geithner recently met and “discussed
the global economy, including the United
States’ economic recovery and the plans of
European leaders to reinforce the institutions
of the Euro area.” Federal Reserve Chairman
Ben Bernanke, conspicuously absent from the
Treasury statement, also was also present and
participated in the same discussions.

Both Bernanke and Geithner are said to be
extremely worried about the worsening trajectory
of the Euro crisis. While they know they are
in a position to delay a breakup of the EU, they
may well be powerless to prevent it if the downward
spiral continues unabated. Geithner’s
message has been a clarion call to EU leaders to
address their core problems now, not later. With
unemployment at depression era levels, and the
periphery of the EU experiencing zero growth,
the massive deficits of countries like Greece,
Italy and Portugal are simply too large to bail
out, even with U.S. help.

So, while EU politicians sit on their deck
chairs, discussing ways to achieve deeper integration
in the 17-nation euro area, Germany,
Austria, and the Netherlands are privately donning
life vests, preparing for the EU ship to sink
in cold, unchartered waters.

When that happens, the well-practiced
S.O.S. call will go out to U.S. rescue ships in
the area, as always, only to find out that they’ve
run out of gas.?

Georgetowner •

In this issue of The Georgetowner, we celebrate
Father’s Day, remember our fathers and
honor the qualities and virtues of fatherhood.

It’s an especially poignant time for us at the
Georgetowner because my sister, Susan, and I lost
our much loved father, Owen G. Bernhardt. Dad
died on March 24 after a long, arduous and painfilled,
but also life-filled, struggle with leukemia.

It has not been long enough
to acquire a distance from his
passing and to continue to acquire
inspiration from his life
and his role as my father.

When you think about
the loss of a loved one and
try to talk about it, it seems
almost surprising to see just
how rich, unique and original
a tapestry he had created with
his life. He was always our
father, and we tended to look
at him, respond to him and see
him in that way.

He was also a husband to
our mother, Pilar, with whom
he shared a remarkably deep
and enduring 43-year marriage.
She passed away at
62, much too young to lose,
in 2002. Together, they formed an enduring marriage
and partnership and made each other complete.

He was an absolutely doting grandfather to
Elisa, now 13, and Stefan, now 11, my niece and
nephew, my sister’s children.

He was more than that: of Swiss, German and
Russian stock, he grew up on a farm in the smalltown
world of heartland Kansas with a childhood
spent during the American Depression. He had
some of that quiet, almost stoic, demeanor that
might be typical of both his background and generation,
but he was also warm, energetic, optimistic
and strong and steady. His was the voice I
knew that would listen to my plans, my hopes and
fears, and he would hear me out, offer advice, and
be totally supportive, no matter how crazy the idea
or project. That included my foray into newspaper
publishing by acquiring the Georgetowner newspaper.
I know in my heart that the success we’ve
had would not have happened without his support,
without that steady voice on the phone, in person
and now in spirit.

His own career was varied and — combined
with his first enduring marriage to my mom —
original and even colorful. He came from a large
family of 11 children. At first, he dutifully took
on the role of managing the family farm but ruefully
discovered that perhaps he was not meant to
be a farmer. Instead, he enlisted in the Air Force,
a decision that landed him in Spain attached to
the Air Ministry in Madrid in 1956 where he met
my mother. He was an enlisted man but operated
among the highest ranks. He served in Vietnam
and acquired a Bronze Star. At the Pentagon, he
had a successful career that made him travel to
most places in the world.

My father had a keen curiosity about people,
about everything he came in contact with. He was
one of those hidden experts who knew a lot about
some very specific things, and at least a little about
most other things, a good quality for the father of
two daughters to have. He played tennis with passion
and loved sports, and his favorite football
team remained the Kansas City Chiefs.

Mostly, I miss his expertise about life. Even
when he was struggling with his illness, which at
one point left him without a viable immune system,
he remained a visible presence in his own
life—and ours. Until the end, he had that unique
skip in his gait that told everyone that everything
was going to be fantastic.

On Father’s Day, I miss my dad, Owen Bernhardt,
a lot. I know that everyone else who knew
him more than casually does, too.

On Father’s Day, I remember my father and
here at the Georgetowner, we remember and celebrate
the life of all the dads, ever, and ask you to
do the same.

— Sonya Bernhardt, publisher

John Fenzel • May 30, 2012

J.P. Morgan’s $2-4 billion trading blunder has reignited the debate of whether our banking industry should remain the oligopoly that it is, or be subject to a broader array of regulatory reforms and restructuring.

The media’s focus on the several billion dollars in bad derivative trades, while replete with shock value, misses the real lessons of the incident. While significant, the losses were hardly catastrophic for the bank. With $2.3 trillion in assets, J.P. Morgan’s loss represents only .1 percent of its total assets and 1 percent of its equity. Clearly, the bad trades represent a failure of risk management, yet the fact remains that J.P. Morgan remains fundamentally well managed. Chances are, the bank will still be profitable in the second quarter.

In the midst of the ongoing media feeding frenzy, J.P. Morgan will do what any well-run organization would do: analyze what went wrong and fix it. Ina Drew, the J.P. Morgan chief investment officer who ran the department behind the massive trading loss, has left the bank with a $32 Million severance package. Other heads will roll in the coming weeks as the forensics behind the bad trades become more apparent.

Jaime Dimon, J.P. Morgan’s chairman and chief executive once praised for adeptly navigating the bank through the 2008 financial crisis shares the blame. His biggest mistake, perhaps, was his lack of humility and his reflexive—if not extreme—resistance to enhanced regulation of the banking industry. On April 13, Dimon downplayed the rumors of the massive losses by referring to it as “a tempest in a teapot.” But after the extent of the losses became clear, and when Dimon was forced to announce the losses on May 10, he explained, “In hindsight, the new strategy was flawed, complex, poorly reviewed, poorly executed and poorly monitored.”

To even a passive observer, the incident highlights that Dimon and other megabank CEOs, supported by a government sanctioned and licensed oligopoly, dominate trading flows and market making, particularly in the “over the counter” (OTC) markets.

What exactly does that mean?

The term, “Oligopoly” comes from the Greek, “Oligos” and “Polein.” “Oligos” translates to “few”; “Polein” means “to sell.” Simply defined, an oligopoly is an economic condition where there are few sellers and many buyers. The few sellers who dominate a market exert control over their competitors’ prices or their ability to freely compete. In an oligopoly, the market is also particularly vulnerable to the mistakes and fates of those few dominant influences.

When Citigroup or Bank of America experience massive losses, the government invariably comes to their rescue with billions in taxpayer dollars quite literally because they are “too big to fail.”

The 2008 financial crisis was largely caused by an overconcentration of derivative instruments in the hands of a few banks. Today, the top six megabanks hold 95 percent of the entire $1.2 quadrillion derivatives market. J.P. Morgan has 44 percent of that market. Those statistics alone constitute an oligopoly in that particular market. Alarming? Now, consider this: today, those same banks have assets that exceed 60 percent of our national GDP.

While the CEOs of the megabank club know the risks of overconcentration well, those whispered conversations normally occur behind closed doors or on the back nine. Their interest, understandably, is in turning massive profits for their shareholders. Each bank, therefore, contributes millions to both political parties, and employs an army of Capitol Hill’s best lobbyists to ensure their advantages are preserved.

Over a century ago, President Theodore Roosevelt confronted the financiers (J.P. Morgan among them) and industrialists head-on with antitrust suits. Despite the accusations of his critics, Roosevelt’s objective was to regulate the giants, not to destroy them. Roosevelt’s direct approach was politically courageous and effective in 1907. Created to safeguard against undo risks by improving accountability and transparency in the financial system, the Dodd-Frank Act was the closest we’ve come to TR’s method yet. But even that “big stick”has, by most accounts, fallen short.
The lessons should be abundantly clear. Mitigating against risk requires sufficient capital. Because J.P. Morgan is a healthy bank, the losses they announced last month, while uncomfortable, were nonetheless manageable. Banks should, therefore be required, by law, to hold ample equity capital to cover any potential losses. That is something regulations can’t do.

Second, the Department of Justice as well as federal regulators should both be empowered and instructed to preemptively break up large financial institutions that pose a threat to the nation’s financial stability. Currently, Dodd-Frank empowers regulators to intervene “only as a last resort.” Dodd-Frank also requires banks to have a “living will” to provide for a managed dissolution in the event of a bankruptcy. This provision remains ill-defined and untested, and offers little reassurance that our economy won’t be driven into the same kind of crisis we experienced in 2008.

Today, the banking system is even more concentrated than pre-2008. Because the largest banks have the implicit backing of U.S. taxpayers, their cost of capital is artificially low. As a result, the megabanks are incentivized to take outsized, irrational risks—and smaller banks are challenged to compete with them.

That is the textbook definition of an oligopoly.

Georgetowner •

Talk to almost anybody about recent revelations, charges and events surrounding Mayor Vincent Gray’s election campaign, especially folks who supported him, and the result is not so much shock as a deep sense of frustration and disappointment.

Two operatives in the campaign—long time ally and friend Thomas W. Gore, who was the assistant treasurer for the Gray’s victorious 2010 campaign, and mystery man and campaign operative Howard Brooks, in guilty pleas to federal prosecutors, admitted that money had been given to fringe candidate Sulaimon Brown to keep his anti-Adrian Fenty campaign alive.

Gore had major roles in Gray’s successful campaigns for a Ward 7 Council seat and for the city council chairmanship. Brooks had been specifically hired for the 2010 campaign. Gore admitted that he and unnamed (so far) others had come up with a plan to pay Brown hundreds of dollars to keep him in the race, where his appearances were noted for their vitriolic attacks on Fenty. Brown had also said that he had been promised a job in the Gray administration. After the election, he did get a job but was fired shortly thereafter.

Other accusations have emerged since, including the possibility of a shadow of a “shadow campaign,” involving developer and Gray supporter Jeffrey Thompson. Gore admitted to shredding the contents of a notebook detailing the payments to Brown, and Brooks admitted lying to the FBI.

The two convictions were the proverbial shoes to drop in the long-standing investigatory cloud hanging over the Gray Administration, a cloud that seemed to wound his mayoralty seriously, almost from the get-go. Most observers believe that this is not the end but perhaps only the beginning of more charges which could lead to the mayor himself.

From the beginning of March (when Brown’s story first emerged), and all the subsequent hearings, investigations and revelations, the mayor has remained steadfastly silent, refusing to talk to the press or the public, other than to maintain his innocence of any wrong-doing and his disbelief that anyone in his campaign would do such things.

Yet at least two of his campaign workers did do such things and more. There is something stark and unequivocal about the admissions of Gore and Brooks—there is no getting around them. They are not rumors, speculations, wild charges, political rants or media exaggerations. They are what they are: facts. Gore did order payments, and Brooks did give money to Brown, in the form of cash and money orders. Gore did shred records. Brooks did lie to the FBI.

There is a real cover-up here. There is a real plan which can easily be construed as a conspiracy. And the political process — the 2010 mayoral election campaign — was tainted by the mayor’s campaign staff if not the mayor himself. That is a legally and morally serious matter.

Gray has even stopped giving his usual denials. He has simply refused to talk about the whole mess on the advice of his attorney, he says.

But he should, and, really, he must. His silence is becoming deafening.

Because silence festers, it keeps the public from imaging the best outcomes. It, inevitably, as one Washington Post columnist bluntly stated, leads you to the conclusion that the mayor was either a fool or a liar.

If the mayor was a part of this—if he sat in on and gave approval to a plan to pay Brown—then, he lied since about the time of the first payment to Brown. He protested too much when he expressed disapproval of Brown’s more loose-cannon invectives against Fenty on the campaign trail
The entire reign of Gray as mayor, during which, oddly enough, the city appears to have actually prospered and remain on a steady course, has been conducted in an atmosphere that is surreal. The mayor remained under an ever-darkening cloud, and the public’s trust in him as well as the District Council—which was also plagued by major ethical issues on the part of some of its members—was as low as it can possibly get.

But the strangest thing of all to some was Gray’s silence. Most politicians, faced with an ongoing political scandal, try to get out in front of it, not simply by making brusque denials, but by grabbing the story by the neck and killing it. Instead, Gray has simply ignored it.

This seems to be a politically and ethically suicidal approach. It does a grave disservice to the city, and to the voters who elected Gray, to all voters, many of whom had been impressed by his conduct as council chairman, by his approachability, by his candor, his then unsullied claims of honesty as a politician. He has now an obligation to explain himself, to tell the story, whether his lawyer says otherwise or not.

It doesn’t really matter that there (as far as we know) were small amounts of money involved, or that the whole plan did not affect the outcome. What matters is that the fringe candidate who was dismissed by many appears to have been telling the truth, at least in terms of the information that was verified recently. What matters is that the process itself was sullied.

Speculation has already started about potential mayoral candidates for 2014. That’s political noodling. With each passing day, and no word from the mayor, district residents might not want to wait that long.

So far, the mayor hasn’t told us anything.

He has to start now.

He owes it to everyone.

Gary Tischler • May 17, 2012

President Barack Obama finally did it.

He maxed out on his evolution on the issue of gay marriage. He’s for it, without equivocation.

This came right as the president revved up his startup activities for his re-election campaign. The announcement–” I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married”–didn’t leave a whole lot of wriggle room.

Whatever the reason for the announcement and decision–Joe “Loose Lips” Biden’s rather casual statement of support for gay marriage on “Meet the Press,” no less, or supporter dissatisfaction with Obama’s slow evolution– it was a historic move, and one bound to affect the presidential campaign.

Presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney was quick to respond that he believed that marriage was defined as being between “one man and one woman,” and that’s probably not his last word on the subject, one way or another, or another.

Gay and lesbian rights activists–who cheered the president’s long anticipated and hoped-for announcement– hope that these are not the Obama’s last words on the subject and that words will lead to some sort of action.

What that might be is unclear. Will he provide actual leadership–moral, rhetorical, executive or whatever–on the issue? Obama has said that he prefers the process winds itself out on the state level, where the issue presents itself in confusing fashion. North Carolina, only days before, held
a vote in which voters banned not only gay marriage but civil unions as well. More than 30 states have passed laws banning gay marriage, while only a handful passed laws allowing gay marriage. On the other, national polls indicate that Americans are divided on the issue, on a 50-50 level.

The opposition to gay marriage tends to be conservative, evangelical, religious and skews older, while support for gay marriage skews younger.

It’s not difficult to understand why many otherwise reasonable people might not support gay marriage on theological grounds. The president’s support–the first by an American president ever–is important for its historical nature, but it does not clarify the conflict. Gay and lesbian rights represents a kind of last frontier on the issue of the role and identity of the other in American society, a last line in
the sand on opponents.

The president’s decision, arrived at perhaps sooner than he would have liked in terms of the election campaign, appears to have been based on experience and perception, with the opinion of his children weighing strongly in the decision. I suspect that’s the kind of thinking that also weighs strongly
in the opinions of most reasonable Americans. A majority of Americans, I suspect, do not oppose civil or partnership rights–inheritance, property, wills and other legal matters–but balk when it comes to marriage, and issues of family and children. I suspect that, beyond issues of religious beliefs, that
opposition is not entirely rational, that it’s grounded in fear of the other and a kind of primitive reaction when it comes to sexual matters.

The idea that family–a mother, a father, children–are the ideal and traditional social, cultural and moral norm in the United State is a belief that is clung to almost fanatically and is belied strongly by the statistical facts of an over 50-percent divorce rate, a high number of children raised by
single parents, and so on. I suspect, too, that the idea of gay people marrying and creating family units is a process that brings gays into the American mainstream as opposed to leaving them exiled on the fringes of societal norms. It’s an idea difficult to accept for large parts of American society which may have never encountered a gay person except on television or in movies.

I suspect until most Americans can expand the idea of what an American family may and can look like and accept it, the issue of gay marriage will remain volatile, intense and divisive.

One thing you can tell politically from President Obama’s tortured evolution to a decision point and to
the muted GOP reply–Romney called the issue “a very tender and sensitive topic”– is that the issue is like the fellow or the gal without a date at the prom. Everyone is reluctant to dance with them, but sooner or later, they’re going to be playing their song. President Obama, in his announcement,
appears to have heard the music.