Impressive!

I've got a few thoughts swirling in my head of things I'm not happy about with the current administration, such as their adoption of the same bigoted defense of DOMA, their recent attempts to keep the visitors logs to the White House secret, and one other that's popped out of my head right now.

But today they did something which might just be really clever (or might just be a coincidence), and I wanted to say something now, so that if I turn out to be right, I can say "I told you so" (and if it doesn't, most likely no one will remember I said it. ;-) ).

I think Obama has found a way to make the fiscal conservatives support gay marriage. Really.

So far, Obama has left the political hot-potato of same-sex marriage lying in the coals, not wanting to burn himself, but he did just take the somewhat less politicall charged step of extending benefits to same sex partners of government workers.

Now of course the logical response to that is "But then what keeps the average single guy from claiming his roommate is his 'partner' to gain benefits?". I think that's unlikely to be a large problem, I think the combination of the basic honesty of most people and the "ick factor" for most straight people at claiming to be gay will keep the numbers of swindlers and con artists down (although they will exist). But it is still a possibility.

And so what is the answer? It is "we have no way of restricting it, because same sex couples can't marry, this is the only way we could be fair to them in benefits". Sure, some people will argue that the benefits should never have been offered, or should be rescinded to solve the problem, but having been offered, I suspect that there would be some very successful lawsuits if the benefits were rescinded.

This leaves the only practical result for the fiscal conservatives (those who are primarily fiscal, not social, conservatives) to be to come out for same-sex marriage, so that if Joe wants to get medical benefits for his worthless lazy roommate Steve, they'll have to actually have a ceremony, put Joe at risk of Steve taking half his stuff in a divorce, etc.

Really, if I'm right, over the next few months as we see people coming out against these benefits because of the abuse factor, they're playing right into the hands of the gay marrage folks.

Pretty slick, Mr. Obama!