ST. LOUIS, Mo. (ABP) — Voters hoping to know more about the vice-presidential candidates’ faith-influenced views on contentious policy issues probably learned little from the Oct. 2 debate between Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Sarah Palin.
Only one question posed by moderator Gwen Ifill, host of PBS’s Washington Week in Review, in the debate dealt directly with a religiously contentious social question — same-sex marriage. Instead, the only scheduled debate between the Democratic senator from Delaware and the Republican governor of Alaska focused mostly on the economy and foreign policy.
When asked about benefits for same-sex couples, both candidates seemed to agree that couples, regardless of sexual orientation, should be granted the same civil benefits.
Biden emphasized that same-sex couples should not be discriminated against for insurance and other benefits. He also said gay partners should enjoy the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts in areas such as hospital visitation and jointly arranged legal contracts.
“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,” Biden said, referring to running mate Barack Obama.
Claiming she has not discriminated against same-sex couples as Alaska’s governor, Palin said she is “tolerant of choices adults make in their relationships.”
But, she added, “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.” Her running mate is John McCain.
“But I will tell Americans straight up that I don’t support defining marriage as anything but between one man and one woman,” she added, “and I think through nuances we can go ’round and ’round about what that actually means.”
He, too, opposes the use of the term “marriage” for same-sex couples, Biden said. “And I take the governor at her word that she wouldn’t discriminate” in civil matters.
However, the two have differing records on gay-rights issues. Although Biden did vote in favor of a 1996 federal law that defines marriage in exclusively heterosexual terms, Obama has vowed to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act. Biden has also voted in favor of other gay-rights measures.
Palin’s record has suggested she is more opposed to gay rights. As an Alaska gubernatorial candidate in 2006, she listed “preserving the definition of marriage as defined in our constitution” as one of her top three legislative priorities. She supported Alaska’s decision to amend its charter to ban same-sex marriage.
She also said, during her gubernatorial campaign, that she disapproved of a recent Alaska Supreme Court ruling that the state had to provide spousal benefits to same-sex partners of government employees. While Palin later signed legislation that enforced the decision, she said at the time that she would support a ballot initiative that would effectively overturn the court ruling by banning gay spouses from state benefits.
She vetoed a legislative attempt to overturn the ruling, but said at the time she was doing so only because attorneys informed her the law would have been unconstitutional.
Nonetheless, gay supporters of Palin have noted, she has devoted very little political capital to opposing gay-rights measures during her term as governor.
Voters looking to the candidates’ stand on Israel would have learned that both Biden and Palin seek to protect that nation through diplomatic means, if possible. However, they were sharply divided on the primary threat to peace and stability in the world.
Palin focused on McCain’s insistence that the United States must win the war in Iraq, and that a timeline to withdraw American troops could not be established. Withdrawal, she said, must be based on Iraq’s ability to assume its own protection.
Although she did not specify what a McCain-Palin administration would do about it, she insisted that a nuclear threat from Iran, particularly against Israel, must be stopped.
“Israel is our strongest and best ally in the Middle East,” Palin said. “We have got to assure them that we will never allow a second Holocaust, despite, again, warnings from Iran and any other country that would seek to destroy Israel — that that is what they would like to see.”
McCain is “wrong” in his insistence that Iraq is the primary threat, Biden responded, emphasizing his “passion” for Israel.
“John continues to tell us that the central war in the front on terror is in Iraq,” Biden said. “I promise you, if an attack comes in the homeland, it’s going to come as our security services have said, it is going to come from al Qaeda planning in the hills of Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
Throughout the debate, Biden hammered at Bush administration policies, suggesting that a McCain-Palin ticket would simply perpetuate Bush’s mistakes. He emphasized the Obama-Biden ticket as the true agents of change.
Palin repeatedly alleged that Biden “only looked backward” to criticize the Bush administration, rather than being “forward-looking” to move into the future, and called the McCain-Palin ticket the true “team of mavericks.”
The debate was held at Washington University in suburban St. Louis.
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— Robert Marus contributed to this story.
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