The Pundits Speak: Keith Olbermann and other traditional journalists on gay issues

Joe Scarborough: I just wasn’t driven by those types of social issues. Now personally, if you’re asking my personal opinion, not my opinion as a journalist, my personal opinion has always been that it’s up to the individual states. I believe that federalism. . . remember in 1995 when I first got elected, I ran as a conservative Republican and when we took off with Gingrich’s Contract with America, and I remember one of my first town hall meetings. I was sitting there going down the line, you know, Cut taxes! Cut spending! Cut regulation! And somebody asked me, “What are we going to do about what they’re doing up in Vermont?”

And I just sat there and laughed and said, “Why do you care if gay men get married in Vermont?” And even then it wasn’t marriage, I guess in ’95 – civil unions. I said, “Why don’t we just look at it this way. We don’t tell gay men whether they can get married or have civil unions in Vermont and they don’t tell us what we should do down here in northwest Florida and everybody will be better off for it.” I haven’t obsessed over [the same-sex marriage issue] because I just don’t obsess over – I haven’t quite figured out what the middle ground is on that issue, where you give full faith and credit to a marriage in Massachusetts or California without the offending the sensibilities of the individual states. Which again, my opinion is, if somebody wants to get married in Massachusetts and I don’t like it, I can move to New Hampshire.

Scarborough

(Editor’s Note: When serving as a U.S. Congressman, Scarborough voted for the Defense of Marriage Act, which directed the federal government to not recognize same-sex marriages in individual states.)