奥巴马对同性恋婚姻予以肯定

SINCE evolution is a gradual process, Barack Obama should perhaps not have felt embarrassed by the fact that, more than three years into his presidency, his exact views on gay marriage were still officially “evolving”. Until this week, that is. In an interview on May 9th Mr Obama finally came to a decision. “At a certain point,” he told ABC, “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.”

既然进化是一个循序渐进的过程，那么巴拉克•奥巴马就不应感到羞愧，因为执政已超三年的他对同性婚姻的态度——用官方话说——依旧在“进化”。直到本周，事情才有了转变。在5月9日的采访中，他终于表明了立场。“时至今日，”他告诉ABC的记者，“我得出的结论是，就个人而言，我应向前迈一步，对同性婚姻予以肯定，这点非常重要。”

Strangely enough, Mr Obama reached his decision within days of Joe Biden, the vice-president, saying that for his own part he was “absolutely comfortable” with same-sex marriages. One day after Mr Biden, Arne Duncan, Mr Obama’s education secretary, said that he too thought same-sex marriages should be legal. The sequence of events creates the impression that by accident or design the president was in the end shamed into speaking his mind.

奇怪的是，几天前副总统拜登声明，他个人认为同性婚姻“完全没有问题”。几天后，奥巴马就表了态。拜登发表声明后的第二天，教育秘书长阿恩•邓肯也表了态，他认为同性婚姻应该合法化。这一连串的表态让人们觉得，纯属巧合也好，有意为之也罢，羞愧心终让总统说出了其立场。

Whatever his motive, Mr Obama’s conversion is a step forward for gay rights. The president had already stopped enforcing, but not yet repealed, the federal Defence of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman. He had repealed the “don’t ask, don’t tell” law which barred homosexuals from serving openly in the armed services. But he had hesitated on gay marriage “in part because I thought that civil unions would be sufficient,” Mr Obama told ABC. He had been “sensitive to the fact that for a lot of people, the word marriage was something that invokes very powerful traditions [and] religious beliefs.”

不管奥巴马出于何种动机，他态度的转变都有利于同性恋者权力的朝前发展。在此之前，奥巴马已下令停止执行《婚姻捍卫法案》，但却未将其废除。该法案将婚姻定义为两名异性的结合。他也废除了“不许问，不许说”政策，该政策曾禁止同性恋者公开在部队中服役。不过，在同性婚姻问题上，他却犹豫不决，“原因之一是我认为民事结合[注1]足矣，”他告诉采访人员。让他一直“坐立不安的是，不少人都将婚姻这个词与影响深远的传统及宗教信仰联系起来。”

At the state level, meanwhile, the cause of both gay marriage and civil unions had a bad week. North Carolina (where the Democrats will hold their convention this summer) voted overwhelmingly in favour of a constitutional amendment to make marriage between one man and one woman the only legal union the state will recognise. And in Colorado a measure to legalise civil unions in a state that made gay marriage illegal in 2006 was prevented from coming to a vote in the state legislature.

与此同时，这一周，同性婚姻及民事结合的发展在各州受阻。北卡罗来纳州(今夏，民主党将于此召开会议)获得了压倒性的投票，投票者们支持修改宪法，使异性婚姻成为唯一合法的结合，这也是该州唯一认可的结合。科罗拉多州曾于2006年将同性婚姻定位非法，如今该州准备将民事结合合法化，但该州立法机关却禁止对其进行投票。

Advocates had expected that Colorado would become the first state that has banned gay marriage to pass a bill allowing civil unions, which grant certain legal rights to same-sex couples. But in a dramatic turn on May 8th a state Senate-approved bill to that effect died without a full vote in the Colorado House of Representatives, which holds a slim 33-22 Republican majority. This was after Frank McNulty, the Republican Speaker, delayed bringing the bill to the floor in time to beat a midnight deadline.

同性婚姻的支持者曾希望禁止同性婚姻的科罗拉多州成为第一个将民事结合合法化的州，因为民事结合能够赋予同性恋者一定的合法权利。但在5月8日，戏剧性的一幕出现了：参议院通过的一项旨在将民事结合合法化的法案于众议院夭折，因该法案只获得了部分选票。众议院共和党与民主党的人数分别为33,22，可见共和党优势微弱。投票之前，共和党发言人弗兰克•麦克纳尔蒂未及时将法案带到众议院，使投票时间超过了午夜这一截止时间，从而失效。

Republicans in Colorado may come to regret the 11th-hour stratagem. In America as a whole, says Gallup, 50% of people support same-sex marriage. And according to local polls, civil unions strike a majority of Coloradans as an acceptable compromise. Maybe the views of its legislature just need time to “evolve”.

科州的共和党人将该法案的投票时间拖延了11小时，他们可能会为这一花招后悔，因为盖洛普民调显示，50%的美国民众都支持同性婚姻。当地民调显示，大多数科州民众都认为将民事结合合法化是个可接受的折中方式。或许科州立法机构对同性婚姻的态度只是需要时间来“进化”。