yeah, see, this is exactly what's wrong with our politics. ossification and an unreasonable demand for purity used to be only for those on the right.
as a homosexual (i love saying that), i totally understood that Obama couldn't take a pro-SSM position because, shock, it would have, at the time, meant that he would be in danger of losing votes that he needed to win the election. i knew, instinctively, that he was pro-SSM, and would one day be pro-SSM, and that if i were patient, and voted for the right people, and continued to make the argument, and if he continued to make incremental change (like DADT), that eventually the time would come. i'm not a child, so i didn't demand to be catered to or that my own individual concerns were so important that they were more important than other concerns, nor do i think that my vote is something rare and precious that must be courted and won, like some maiden's virginity. politics is a zero sum game, and it's a long game, and it's more important to assemble a coalition and run a national party that works together for achievable common goals than to be so sure of our rightness and so intolerant of other viewpoints and ways of life and the fact that, gosh, change *is* hard for some people, that we sacrifice the good for our own self-absorbed ideas of perfection.
