Why gay is a campaign issue in US

One of former Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s many uninspired decisions was to choose Sarah Palin as his running mate for the 2008 election.

Palin exposed McCain’s soft underbelly with her apparent lack of depth on many issues. Claiming that she could see Russia from her doorstep was one.

It was easy to see what kind of Vice President she would have become. President Barack Obama’s right-hand man Joe Biden too had a fair share of gaffes.

He once told a Senator who was wheelchair-bound to stand up so the crowd could see him and introduced Obama as Barack America on their first campaign rally together in 2008.

He has also been caught cursing with the microphone on. But his latest was not an accident. It certainly wasn’t a gaffe.

He was on Meet The Press, a popular Sunday evening programme on television, when he asserted that he is “absolutely comfortable” with same-sex marriage.

The VP said Americans have long been prepared for this by Will and Grace, a TV programme that once aired on KTN. Will is a gay lawyer and Grace his straight housemate.

It made same-sex marriages the talk of the week and put his boss, President Obama, in a spot. An interview with ABC News was timed perfectly during the day on Wednesday, and the President finally abandoned the incoherence of his earlier position.

His exact words were, “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.”

Obama was well on his way to that position. He had repealed a law that banned soldiers from revealing their sexual orientation, spoke in support of benefits for same-sex couples and asked the Department of Justice not to defend a federal law defining marriage as between a man and a woman.

Before Wednesday, he had never come out openly in support of gay marriage, only saying that his was an “evolving” position.

Mitt Romney has not been consistent either. He has in the past said he is against gay marriage but was “firmly in support of people not being discriminated against based upon their sexual orientation.”

This was a few months after signing a pledge by the anti-gay National Organisation calling for legislators to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

On Wednesday, he said he is against same-sex marriage. Why all this flip-flopping in a country that has strong guarantees for individual rights? A country where they say anything is possible?

It boils down to the electorate and the country’s religious grounding. Both candidates know the issue can cost them the election in states where the conservative Christians are influential.

Whether or not that affects Obama’s chances in November is a matter for debate. Until then, the campaigns continue.

Mr Ngirachu is on a training programme in the US under the Alfred Friendly Press Fellowships.