More on Candidates and Sexuality

I watched the YOUTUBE/CNN debate last night with great interest. Partially, because I still haven't decided on a candidate, but also to see how sexuality issues were covered.

Yes, Senator Obama got to talk again about sexuality education for children. He seems to have decided that the safest way to go is to talk about sexual abuse prevention -- his statement a few days earlier at Planned Parenthood were much stronger. Several of the candidates were asked about marriage equality, and three cheers to the lesbian couple that asked it. We've got to see what we can do to help the candidates not say "gay marriage" but to talk about equality. I wished John Edwards could move beyond civil unions, but I liked his honesty about his struggle. I agreed with Senator Obama's response and it's clear he's been working on it: civil marriage rights for all with denominations deciding whether to perform rites or not for same sex couples.

The remarkable thing to me is that these issues are now standard discussion points. As Senator Clinton said last night, how amazing it was to have people fighting about who best represented women's issues. The Pew Research Center was quoted in this past week's Sunday New York Times: 75% of voters said that whether a candidate was a woman would not affect their voting, 86% didn't care if a person had been divorced, and 51% didn't care if a candidate was gay. Perhaps America is growing up on sexuality issues.