January 28, 2005

Bredesen: Tolerance Doesn't Require Allowing Gay Marriage

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, increasingly touted recently as a possible presidential candidate for the Democrats in 2008, is sure to anger the party's liberal base with his comments in today's Knoxville News Sentinel about "gay marriage," which he called "a vastly different issue from tolerance for gays."

"I certainly have said frequently over the years that I would happily promote hire or discharge of people in state government without regard to sexual orientation or anything like that," he said. "But it seems to me that's a long way from putting official imprimatur of the state on a union where, you know, there's many thousands of years of history to the contrary. It strikes me as unnecessary and contrary to the values of most Americans."

Bredesen says he won't oppose a proposed state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. His stance - tolerance for gays but no change to the millennia-old definition of marriage - likely reflects that of a majority of Americans, but will anger the Left and the gay-activist special interest wing of the Democratic Party. Just one more reason why Bredesen would be more likely to win the White House than the Democratic Primary.

UPDATE: GayLinkNews.com, an online news aggregator of gay-relevant news from MSM news sources, gay media and weblogs, has linked to this post. I have no clue if GayLinkNews.com is a popular news website among gays, but if it is, Phil Bredesen just lost the gay vote.