Paul Wellstone was evolving too

I can't help but think of Paul Wellstone today. It feels like perhaps he's somewhere watching all this talk about equal rights for GLBT and reflecting on the slow but painful nature of progress.

An awful lot of progressives who admire Wellstone sometimes forget that even he was still in the process of evolving. In 1996 he voted for DOMA. I remember being extremely disappointed in him at the time.

In the end, I think he was perhaps disappointed in himself as well. Here's what he said about that vote later in his book The Conscience of a Liberal:

What troubles me is that I may not have cast the right vote on DOMA. I might have rationalized my vote by making myself believe that my honest position was opposition [to same sex marriage]. This vote was an obvious trap for a senator like me, who was up for reelection. Did I convince myself that I could gleefully deny Republicans this opportunity? . . . When Sheila and I attended a Minnesota memorial service for Mathew Shepard, I thought to myself, 'Have I taken a position that contributed to a climate of hatred?' . . . I still wonder if I did the right thing.

It is that kind of courageous self-examination that allows for evolution.