SLATE: Bernie Sanders Claims He’s a Longtime Champion of Marriage Equality.

[thesquanderer]

186. Actually no, he did not say "I favor civil unions"

At least not in that video. He said, "I was a strong supporter of civil unions." He did not say he *favored* them. If you're going to parse his words to try to discern an underlying additional meaning, you need to at least get the words right. "Favor" means "prefer" and that is not something that he said here. It may or may not have been his position, but it's not the word he used here.

More to the point, one can obviously be a "strong supporter of civil unions" and still not actually be against gay marriage. A decade+ ago, many gay activists were strong supporters of civil unions, not because they were against gay marriage, but because they thought civil unions were a more immediately acheivable goal. For example, see http://www.sevendaysvt.com/vermont/gay-rights-activists-committed-to-moving-beyond-civil-unions/Content?oid=2128715

In Vermont, "We've taken a breather from the civil-union debate and are now ready to open the {marriage} conversation again," says Beth Robinson, chair of the Vermont Freedom to Marry Task Force. "The world has changed so much since 2000," the year of the civil-unions debate
...
Exit polls in 2004 showed 40 percent of Vermonters favoring marriage, 86 percent supporting civil unions, and only 2 percent opposed to either.

Note that since the numbers add up to more than 100%, obviously many of the people supporting civil unions also supported gay marriage. It is ridiculous to say that support for one means you couldn't have also supported the other.

Now let's look at exactly what was asked in that video, and exactly how he answered.

The question was a compound question with numerous points. He was asked, "do you think that gay people outght to have the right to get married outside Massachusetts, be able to file joint federal income taxes and so forth; if you do, would you sponsor legislation to that effect" etc.

By saying "I was a strong supporter of civil unions" (note the past tense), he is pointing out that he had *already* long made clear his support for things like the ability to file joint federal income taxes, which was part of the question.

By saying (as he does later in the answer) "I believe that the federal government should not be involved in overturning Massachusetts or any other state because I think, Stuart, the whole issue of marriage is a state issue," he is answering the question about sponsoring legislation (as a U.S. Senator) to legalize gay marriage nation-wide, saying essentially that he would not sponsor such legislation and that he does not think that is appopriate to legislate that issue at the federal level. And constitutionally, he is correct. It was not up to the Congress to legislate gay marriage into or out of existence. It was up to the states to do it, and if it were disputed (as it was) then it would be up to the Supreme Court. In fact, that's how it played out, and nothing any U.S. Senator could have introduced was going to change that either way. No U.S. Senator ever introduced legislation to mandate gay marriage in all 50 states, it would have been a pointless thing to do. So his answer was an honest, realistic, and practical one: no, he would not introduce such legislation.

Yes, it would have been better if he had said, not only should the federal government not try to overturn the Massachusetts law permitting gay marriage because it's not their purview, they should also not try to overturn the law because it's a darn good law. I think it's a safe bet that that's what he believed (based on his general voting record and rhetoric over the years). But it was probably smart politics to not include that in this particular answer in 2006.

I think the worst thing you can say about this video is that he danced around his personal beliefs about gay marriage, never actually saying whether he was personally for or against it. But you know, he's still a politician, and the goal here is to win the debate/election. The goal is not necessarily to reveal every nuance of your opinion about something, especially in a format that limits the time you have to explain something. So I would say his answer was truthful, but we can't assume it was necessarily complete. Really, when a moderator asks a question with numerous parts, it is extremely rare that a candidate actually specifically addresses every last phrase within the question.

Regardless, if you're going to compare records in terms of championing gay rights, I don't think anyone can argue with a straight face that Bernie isn't ahead of Hillary on this one.