SACRAMENTO — The answer sounded simple enough. Appearing on Jay Leno's "Tonight Show" last week, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was asked if he would "have any problem" if the law were changed to allow same-sex couples to marry.
If the people wanted it, the governor said, "that's fine with me."
Calls soon flowed into the governor's office in Sacramento -- about 200 total. Precisely what did Schwarzenegger mean? His answer to Leno is now the subject of sharp disagreement, as liberals, conservatives and even Schwarzenegger's own advisors parse the exchange between the governor and his comedian friend for clues as to where he really stands.
Was he merely saying that he would enforce the law, whatever it is, even though his own feeling is that gay marriages should be banned? Or was he signaling that his views on marriage are more elastic than his previous statements suggest?
"I don't think he goes to sleep at night worrying that Thelma and Louise got married," said state Sen. John Burton (D-San Francisco), the Senate's Democratic leader.
The state GOP has been fielding its own share of anxious calls and e-mails from Republicans looking for reassurance that the governor can be counted on to preserve laws that bar gays from marrying. People wanted to know if the governor would uphold state marriage laws, or had he changed his mind, said Duf Sundheim, chairman of the California Republican Party.
Gary L. Bauer, a conservative Republican who ran for president in 2000, sent a fax to friends and supporters on Thursday that included a commentary on Schwarzenegger's "Tonight Show" appearance titled: "Forget Arnold."
Bauer wrote that "the Terminator betrayed hundreds of thousands of moral conservatives by saying it would be 'fine with me' if the courts forced homosexual marriage on California and he undercut President Bush's call for a constitutional marriage protection amendment."
Said Sundheim: "There was a reaction from the [party's] base. When you talk it through, then people are a little bit calmer. You go through what the language was and what he was trying to say, and I've gotten a calmer response."
At some level, Schwarzenegger's comments amounted to an inkblot test: What people believe he said depended on what they wanted to hear. There was grist for both sides. At one point in his national television appearance, the governor said he would not "have a problem" if voters were to change the law and permit gays to marry. Yet he never explicitly endorsed gay marriage and made clear that he opposed the marriage licenses being issued in San Francisco, in defiance of state law.
