Cheney comes out in favor of same-sex marriage (while our liberal POTUS remains opposed).
Will this have any effect on Conservatives?
I doubt it. Apparently he has expressed this position in the past, and I imagine the Republicans are divided between “Will not touch Bush & Company with a bargepole” and “Will disregard Cheney’s position in favour of their religious position”.
Wow, ABC really spun that one. Cheney says states should have the right to ban gay marriage, and the story is “Cheney supports gay marriage, as long as it’s decided on a state by state basis!”
Baloney.
I don’t think it’s baloney. He says that he thinks that marriage is a state matter, but that he thinks gay marriage should be allowed in every state. That’s pro gay marriage.
So Obama is the one who wants to make national legal protection for same sex couples, and Cheney is the one who wants to give states the right to deny legal protection for same sex couples, and Cheney is pro-gay because he says “I am pro-gay”, and Obama is anti-gay?
I don’t think Obama is anti-gay. I think on the issue of gay marriage, Cheney has come further than Obama in supporting it, but that tends to happen when you have a gay kid.
And states already have “the right to deny legal protection for same sex couples”. States define who’s allowed to get married, and always have. You can support gay marriage without believing that marriage should be federalized.
Haven’t seen the ABC spin on this, but Cheney’s position is the worst sort of chicken shit.
I believe the man does sincerely support SSM, possibly because of his daughter. But I think he can’t make the simplest statement of that support because of his devotion to conservatism.
“We favor small government”. Therefore, this should be a states issue.
I call major bullshit on that. Using this position, Mississippi could have continued discriminating against blacks. I see no difference in this situation.
How in the world can you argue that Cheney has come further on that position, when his position is “it should be exactly like it is RIGHT NOW, and should not change” and Obama’s position is “there ought to be legal protection guaranteeing gay rights”?
No.
The scale on this issue has already reached the tipping point. Given the way young people are in favor of allowing same-sex marriage, it’s going to be allowed in a lot of places fairly soon. I’m glad Dick Cheney finally admitted his opinion on this subject but it makes no difference.
Cheney’s support can easily be dismissed. He *has *to support SSM, or risk losing the assistance of the only person in the world who will actually defend him in public these days. 
Yep, that’s right. One thing I learned from the SDMB is that supporting civil unions in lieu of gay marriage is a bigoted anti-gay hate crime. And that is the position that Obama is supporting.
I can’t believe I’m about to defend Dick Cheney, but:
How in the world do you get that from his statement? He said, “I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish. Any kind of arrangement they wish.” That is clearly not the case RIGHT NOW, so how can you possibly infer that he thinks things should be exactly like they are RIGHT NOW? You’re accusing ABC of spin, but in the same breath directly contradicting Cheney’s plain words.
There’s a difference between endorsing a state’s legal right to make a certain decision, and endorsing the decision itself. Just because you’re unable to accept a solution at anything but the federal level doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist. It could quite plausibly be argued that an incrementalist implementation of SSM will minimise the controversy, and thus smooth the transition; liberal states implement SSM, the skies fail to fall, and the idea gains democratic traction rather than being forced on some undeniably hostile states. Jonathan Rauch, author of Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America, briefly argues this case in an interview with The Economist, and more lengthily here.
I can only assume Cheny supports same sex marriage is because he sees mariage as a form of torture.
The thing about Cheney is he is an arch Neocon, but the other stuff he just isn’t ideological about at all, is the impression I get. My grandmother is the same way, she would probably be just like Cheney when it comes to protecting us against terrorists and the CiC role the President can play, but if you asked he about gay marriage her answer would be, “Why the hell should I care, let them get married if they want. It doesn’t affect me none”
His words are pretty clear. I’m not spinning them. He said himself that he doesn’t think the law should be changed to protect gay couples and give them something closer to equal protection. He’s paying lip service to gay activists and offering nothing actually progressive.
This is preposterous. He quite clearly says that he wants gay people to be free to join in whatever union they want; this, again quite clearly, will require a change in the law. He just said he didn’t want this enacted at a federal level. You may disagree with him, but I simply can’t see how you can claim he does not want change. Right there in black and white, he says he wants things to be other than they are.
Do you even acknowledge that SSM can be implemented on a state-by-state basis? Do you completely rule out the existence of any solution that isn’t federal? Because it seems to me that you can only read Cheney’s words the way you do if you pretend that there is only one law: federal law.
I haven’t read through the other responses to the thread yet, but I’d have to say the answer to this is: no. Cheney has, in the past, hinted at his support for SSM (his daughter is gay), and this has seemingly had zero effect on most social Conservatives. The thing is, while Cheney is seen on this board as the arch-Conservative (and evil dictator from hell), he really isn’t…he is an arch-NEO-Conservative. Which is a vastly different beast than, say, a social Conservative. To most Neo-Cons a lot of the social hot button issues are more a matter of politics, not fervent belief. They have to keep the knuckle dragging faction on board so that they can push through their own agendas.
So…no, I don’t think that Cheney finally coming out of the closet (so to speak) on this issue will make one bit of difference to most social conservatives who oppose SSM.
-XT
Curse you for inflicting that mental image on us!
How about “coming out of the man-sized safe?”
But that’s exactly how things are right now. A few states have SSM. Most don’t. The states that don’t are free to make it legal any time they want. Alternatively, they’re free to continue to refuse to honor same-sex marriages performed in other states. That doesn’t sound like much of a change to me, and it certainly wouldn’t give married same-sex couples the same consistency and portability of rights enjoyed by opposite-sex couples.