Dean: Mosque Like Civil Unions

Former Democratic National Committee chairman and Vermont governor Howard Dean believes the Islamic cultural center and mosque proposed near the World Trade Center site in New York City should be built somewhere else, and he invoked the bitter debate surrounding civil unions in his state to explain his position Thursday on Countdown With Keith Olbermann.

Dean, who described his stance as the "middle" view, compared the tone of the conversation surrounding the mosque to the divisive civil unions debate in Vermont in 2000. That prompted Olbermann to ask why civil unions were worth fighting for, and a mosque was not, according to the The Huffington Post.

"You brought up civil unions, and that brings me to another quote from some of the WABC material. Let me read this again. You said, 'There's no point starting off trying to do something that's good if it's going to meet with an enormous resistance from a lot of folks.' Does that not describe your effort to get civil unions and the 50-state strategy or the Obama presidential campaign or health care reform? We can go on forever and say doesn't that describe the American Revolution?"

Dean replied, "Yeah, I don't think you intentionally truncated that quote. What I meant to say was if you get further. ... Look, these folks have a right to build this and where they're about to build it. I think to focus solely on that and exclude further dialogue is a mistake. Look, will the United States survive whether we build this or not where it's supposed to be built? I think so. But this might be the time where we've got to start setting this stuff aside and listening to each other instead of talking past each other. Look at the Middle East peace process. There are people at the far ends of the spectrum who want to undo the progress. I think this may be a teachable moment. I really do."

Earlier in the interview, Olbermann asked Dean how he would feel if the mosque instead were a gay rights center proposed near a school, or if it were a civil rights facility in the South in 1963. Dean did not respond to the gay center analogy but he did say that comparing the Park 51 project, as it is officially known, to a civil rights center seemed inappropriate.

Watch the interview. The civil unions discussion begins at the 8;00 mark.

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