Good Wednesday morning Fellow Seekers,

The joint appearance on Almanac a week ago Friday featuring Al Franken, Mike Ciresi and Jim Cohen, was the closest thing we’ve had to a debate among the DFL Senate candidates. It was polite (or bland, depending on your tastes) and didn’t highlight a lot of clear differences among the three on the issues.

About halfway through, they spent a couple of minutes on the issue of gay marriage (which suddenly hit the headlines again because of the Iowa court ruling). My esteemed colleague Eric Eskola (and this is my first opportunity to tell Eric welcome back) asked the three if they favored legalizing gay marriage.

Franken gave a flat one-word answer of “yes.”

This goes beyond the liberal-but-politically-safe position, currently fashionable in Democratic circles and taken by the leading Democratic presidential candidates, they they favor equal rights for gay couples but believe that the word “marriage” should be reserved for couples consisting of one man and one woman.

University of Minnesota Law Prof. Dale Carpenter, a gay marriage advocate who teaches about sexual orientation legal issues, said there are very few states, and Minnesota is not among them, in which support for gay marriage is politically advantageous. After reviewing the Almanac debate at my request, he called Franken’s answer honest and straightforward, but “politically radioactive in a race against [Sen. Norm] Coleman.”

In the Almanac debate, Cohen made clear that he favors the civil unions route, but not the full “marriage” road. (By the way, to watch the full debate, this link will get you an index of Almanac. Put “Senate Debate” in the search engine and that should get you a link to the video.)

Ciresi gave an answer that he repeated three times, using almost identical language, that Almanac co-host Cathy Wurzer acknowledged left her confused. That’s because it was confusing. Version two went like this:

“Eskola: Are you for legalizing gay marriage?

Ciresi: No. What I’ve said is I’m for no discrimination whatsoever. But that in terms of marriage I am not in favor of imposing that on religious denominations.”

It sounded like Ciresi was taking the currently fashionable Dem. position, but not quite. If his only reservation about supporting gay marriage is that religious denominations that don’t want to perform and consecrate gay marriages shouldn’t have to, that’s actually a lesser problem than those who say that they believe the word “marriage” should be reserved for one-man-one-woman.

The definition of marriage is handled on a state-by-state basis. In states (basically Massachusetts) where gay marriage has been legal for more than a few days, unwilling religious denominations are not forced to perform them.

Some denominations happily perform same-sex marriages. Some refuse. Religious denominations always have, and, under the First Amendment presumably always will, retain the right to decide whom they will and won’t marry as a religious question. The legislative/judicial question is whether states should extend the rights, benefits and obligations of marriage — including the right to legally call their relationship a “marriage” — to same-sex couples.

Carpenter said that if, as Ciresi suggests, his only objection to gay marriage is that religious denomination should not be coerced, “it’s an exception that makes no sense.” He knows of no requirement under any gay marriage law under discussion that would coerce unwilling churches “and no one would contemplate any such thing.”

Ciresi stated clearly on all three rounds on Almanac that he wanted same-sex couples to have all of the legal and economic rights of married couples.

In 2000, when he made his first Senate run, Ciresi opposed the Defense Of Marriage Act, which specifically denied all federal benefits of marriage (like, for example, spousal survivorship benefits under Social Security) to gay couples.

Logically, it seemed that Ciresi might actually be closer to Franken’s position than his somewhat confusing statement implied. So, working through his able spokesters, I pressed for a clarification: Given that legalization of gay marriage would not require religious denominations to perform marriages that violated their denominational doctrines, does Ciresi believe that states should make full civil marriage available to same-sex couples?

First answer:

“I am in favor of civil unions — or what ever states choose to call it.”

That seemed to eliminate most of the difference between Ciresi’s and Franken’s positions. But just to make sure I wasn’t missing a subtle, semantic reservation, I went back one more time to specifically ask whether “whatever states choose to call it” included the possibility that states would choose to call it “marriage.”

Ciresi spokester Leslie Sandberg said Ciresi is fine with “marriage,” if that’s the word a state decides to use. The most important thing to him is that all couples have equal civil rights. He sees it as a civil rights issue and is less interested in the semantics.

Then why, I asked, does Ciresi frame his answer around a concern that religious denominations will be coerced? And why, when directly asked if he favored legalization of gay marriage, was the first word out of his mouth, “no.”

Sandberg said that Ciresi is aware of the push in some conservative circles for an federal constitutional amendment that would prohibit any state from offering marriage or any equivalent of marriage to gay and lesbian couples.

Ciresi opposes that idea and he is concerned that, as a matter of politics, those pushing for such an amendment might try to frame it as an issue of religious freedom and raise the spectre of denominations being forced to perform marriages to which they object. So he mentions that he is not in favor of anything that would have such an effect.

Maybe so, but if that is Ciresi’s intent, his chosen answer probably has the opposite effect, by implying that the coercion of religious denomination is an issue that he’s worried about.

When I asked Carpenter about all of these iterations, he surmised that Ciresi’s answer was designed to send reassuring messages to two different constituencies with opposite impulses. Gays and lesbians will hear that he favors one of their top priorities, equal rights for gay and married couples. But religious voters who favor the traditional definition of marriage will hear that he will not allow anyone to impose gay marriage on reluctant religious denominations.

Carpenter also agreed that after all the clarifications, the apparent difference between Ciresi’s and Franken’s position on the issue had mostly disappeared.

Cross-posted at Minnesota Monitor.