With no foreign
policy credentials, next to no national profile, and
having served in the statehouse for less than two years,
Palin has such a thin record -- both legislatively and
in terms of public statements -- that it’s
difficult to predict just what sort of vice president she
might soon become. As for issues affecting gay
Americans, there’s only a handful of legal
decisions -- made early in her tenure as governor --
that can help us divine where she stands.
When John McCain
announced Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his
vice-presidential running mate in late August, the response
was near-universal astonishment. With no foreign
policy credentials, next to no national profile, and
having served in the statehouse for less than two
years, Palin has such a thin record -- both legislatively
and in terms of public statements -- that it’s
difficult to predict just what sort of vice president
(or, given McCain’s advanced age, president) she
might soon become. As for issues affecting gay Americans,
there’s only a handful of legal decisions --
made early in her tenure as governor -- that can help
us divine where she stands.
A self-described
“hockey mom,” hunting enthusiast, and
evangelical Christian, Palin has been reared in the
political culture of Alaska. It’s a state whose
politics is defined at times by a libertarian,
live-and-let-live approach that fits naturally with frontier
existence and at times by a more intrusive,
religiously grounded conservatism brought by the
Southerners and Westerners who swarmed the state in the
1970s and ’80s for jobs in the booming oil industry.
In 1996 the Alaska state legislature passed a law
stipulating that marriage can exist only between
people of opposite genders. A gay couple sued the state on
the basis that the measure was discriminatory. Two
years later, 68% of voters approved a constitutional
amendment banning same-sex marriage, making Alaska the
first state to amend its constitution this way.
Palin, then mayor
of Wasilla -- a city about 40 miles north of Anchorage
with a population of less than 10,000 -- supported the
marriage amendment, as did most of the state’s
politicians. And she continued to solidify her
reputation as a traditional, “family values”
conservative as her political career took off. Running
for governor in 2006, she announced her opposition to
a 2005 Alaska supreme court ruling that ordered the
state government to offer health and retirement benefits to
the domestic partners of its employees; her Democratic
opponent, former governor Tony Knowles, supported the
ruling. In a questionnaire provided by the Alaska
chapter of the Eagle Forum, the socially conservative
lobbying organization founded by Phyllis Schlafly, Palin
listed “preserving the definition of
‘marriage’ as defined in our
constitution” as one of her highest priorities.
Palin won the
gubernatorial election comfortably -- and one of her first
acts in office was to veto a bill that would have blocked
those court-ordered benefits for same-sex couples. The
move is now cited as an example of her
“inclusiveness,” but she made it only under
the advisement of the attorney general, who said the
bill violated the state constitution’s equal
protection clause. In a statement released in
conjunction with the veto, Palin made clear her continued
opposition to domestic-partner benefits:
“Signing this bill would be in direct violation
of my oath of office,” she said, emphasizing that her
rejection of the bill was purely legalistic and ought
not to be taken as a sign of any newfound support for
gay rights.
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