It is always so much fun to watch Democratic candidates’ efforts earn their party’s nomination.  Take, for example, the story in this week’s Bay Area Reporter, a newspaper covering issues in the Bay Area’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community, reporting how Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo is on record for strongly supporting gay marriage while Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown is refusing to take a position on the issue.  Gay and lesbian advocates are critical of Brown for signing a 1977 bill which changed the legal definition of marriage as being between two people to being between a man and a woman.  While refusing to say if Brown today supports gay marriage, Brown’s campaign spokesman instead pointed to a 1975 law Brown signed that legalized adultery, oral sex and sodomy between consenting adults. 

"That was one of the most courageous things anyone has ever done. He made all consensual sex acts legal. You won’t find anyone else from the 1970s making those kinds of courageous decisions," said Ace Smith, Brown’s spokesman. "He has one of the most courageous pioneering record in GLBT rights anywhere in the country."

Gay rights advocates consider the 1975 bill to be a landmark change in gay rights, while the 1977 law Brown signed is considered to be a major hurdle to making gay marriage legal.

My guess is that Brown thinks that he’s pretty sure to get the Democratic nomination and doesn’t need to cater to the LGBT community whose positions are generally not embraced by the majority of California voters.  Delgadillo, however, needs to drum up as much Democratic suport as possible.  And, as San Francisco Assemblyman Mark Leno points out in the Bay Area Reporter article, gay marriage "is now a core Democratic moral value" and that "it won’t be very long before every Democrat with credibility could not run in this state without supporting a woman’s right to choose and supporting marriage equality."  Jerry Brown must figure that day hasn’t arrived, even in California Democratic politics.

To read the entire Bay Area Reporter story, click here.

This entry was posted on Friday, March 24th, 2006 at 12:00 am and is filed under Blog Posts.