What Did You Think?

Aaron, Chris and I watched tonight's debate at the LGBT For Obama event at Room Service in the Flatiron District, where we arrived to find the place ridiculously packed. Like much of the room, we spent the entire time standing pressed up against a seating area, so by the time it was over my back was aching. Oy. The organizers spoke briefly before things got started, asking for volunteers to ride campaign buses to swing states and help drum up support.

So. What did you think? The crowd at Room Service hooted and booed every time Palin went into her folksy charm schtick and erupted with jeers anytime she veered from the question at hand. Which seemed to be rather often. However, the consensus afterwards was the Palin didn't quite do as bad as everybody had hoped. I'll have to read some analysis before I decide on that, we couldn't hear some of what she was saying due to the hooting of the crowd.

BEST BIT: How about that statement of support for gays from Biden? One of the best I've heard, despite the anti-marriage bit that followed.

WORST BIT: Did you notice at the end how Palin's handlers fucking HURLED that baby into her arms? Palin stood there patting and bouncing the baby while her other spawn milled around her feet. Shameless.

UPDATE: Via Towleroad, here's the video and transcript of the gay rights discussion.

IFILL: The next round of -- pardon me, the next round of questions starts with you, Sen. Biden. Do you support, as they do in Alaska, granting same-sex benefits to couples?

BIDEN: Absolutely. Do I support granting same-sex benefits? Absolutely positively. Look, in an Obama-Biden administration, there will be absolutely no distinction from a constitutional standpoint or a legal standpoint between a same-sex and a heterosexual couple.

The fact of the matter is that under the Constitution we should be granted -- same-sex couples should be able to have visitation rights in the hospitals, joint ownership of property, life insurance policies, et cetera. That's only fair.

It's what the Constitution calls for. And so we do support it. We do support making sure that committed couples in a same-sex marriage are guaranteed the same constitutional benefits as it relates to their property rights, their rights of visitation, their rights to insurance, their rights of ownership as heterosexual couples do.

IFILL: Governor, would you support expanding that beyond Alaska to the rest of the nation?

PALIN: Well, not if it goes closer and closer towards redefining the traditional definition of marriage between one man and one woman. And unfortunately that's sometimes where those steps lead.

But I also want to clarify, if there's any kind of suggestion at all from my answer that I would be anything but tolerant of adults in America choosing their partners, choosing relationships that they deem best for themselves, you know, I am tolerant and I have a very diverse family and group of friends and even within that group you would see some who may not agree with me on this issue, some very dear friends who don't agree with me on this issue.

But in that tolerance also, no one would ever propose, not in a McCain-Palin administration, to do anything to prohibit, say, visitations in a hospital or contracts being signed, negotiated between parties.

But I will tell Americans straight up that I don't support defining marriage as anything but between one man and one woman, and I think through nuances we can go round and round about what that actually means.

But I'm being as straight up with Americans as I can in my non- support for anything but a traditional definition of marriage.

IFILL: Let's try to avoid nuance, Senator. Do you support gay marriage?

BIDEN: No. Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage. We do not support that. That is basically the decision to be able to be able to be left to faiths and people who practice their faiths the determination what you call it.

The bottom line though is, and I'm glad to hear the governor, I take her at her word, obviously, that she think there should be no civil rights distinction, none whatsoever, between a committed gay couple and a committed heterosexual couple. If that's the case, we really don't have a difference.

IFILL: Is that what your said?

PALIN: Your question to him was whether he supported gay marriage and my answer is the same as his and it is that I do not.

IFILL: Wonderful. You agree. On that note, let's move to foreign policy.