The Democratic candidate knows that you know that he has no clothes ...

... Which he's totally cool with. So long as you are. You are, right? ... Oh, well that's cool too. Or is it?

MR. RUSSERT: I'd like to go to Alison King of New England Cable News again for another question. Alison.

MS. KING: Thanks, Tim.

The issues surrounding gay rights have been hotly debated here in New England. For example, last year some parents of second graders in Lexington, Massachusetts, were outraged to learn their children's teacher had read a story about same-sex marriage, about a prince who marries another prince.

Same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts, but most of you oppose it. Would you be comfortable having this story read to your children as part of their school curriculum?

I'm going to start with Senator Edwards.

MR. EDWARDS: Yes, absolutely.

What I want is I want my children to understand everything about the difficulties that gay and lesbian couples are faced with every day, the discrimination that they're faced with every single day of their lives. And I suspect my two younger children -- Emma Claire, who's nine, and Jack, who's seven -- will reach the same conclusion that my daughter, Cate, who's 25, has reached, which is she doesn't understand why her dad is not in favor of same-sex marriage, and she says her generation will be the generation that brings about the great change in America on that issue.

So I don't want to make that decision on behalf of my children. I want my children to be able to make that decision on behalf of themselves, and I want them to be exposed to all the information, even in -- did you say second grade? Second grade might be a little tough, but even in second grade to be exposed to all --

MS. KING: Well, that's the point is second grade.

MR. EDWARDS: -- to all of those possibilities because I don't want to impose my view. Nobody made me God. I don't get to decide on behalf of my family or my children, as my wife, Elizabeth, who's spoken her own mind on this issue. I don't get to impose on them what it is that I believe is right.

But what I will do as president of the United States is I will lead an effort to make sure that the same benefits that are available to heterosexual couples -- 1,100, roughly, benefits in the federal government -- are available to same-sex couples; that we get rid of DOMA, the Defense Of Marriage Act; that we get rid of "don't ask, don't tell," which is wrong today, was wrong when it was enacted back in the 1990s.

I will be the president that leads a serious effort to deal with the discrimination that exists today.

Hey, hey, everybody! Check it out! I'm John Edwards:

Er, uh, I'm not going to be the guy that tells anybody that same-sex marriage is okay. No sir! That's because, it is okay, and my position will be recognized to have been the most courageous one, once my political career is safely and uncontroversially at an end, and my kids take office. When they do, having spent their entire lives ignoring me as I was standing there in that corner, behind the grandfather clock there, saying nothing, they'll prove that I was wrong in saying the thing that I never said. Proving that I was right! Hating discrimination--which is what I do--is not a position, so it can't be an imposition. I hate impositions because they aren't positions at all, in a way. They aren't positions, but they have all of the discrimination of positions ... Believe, America! Believe! ... But without "believing" believing, if you follow me. And I don't mean the weird kind of following either. Rather, I mean the following of trust. Skeptical trust. Anyway, suffice it to say that same-sex marriage is, first and foremost, a matter for time-travel. And when the day comes that we're able to travel through time in a little aluminum outhouse type thing or--a garden shed, we'd better call it a garden shed--or whatever you like, really ... When that day comes we'll have same-sex marriage to thank for the greatest innovation in mankind's--humankind's, that is, and the LGBT community's-- history! And so I say: thank-you, same-sex-marriage-in-the- future!

I love this guy.

H/T Stand Firm