President Obama Comes Out In Favor of Same-Sex Marriage

Folks, today was a historic day in United States politics.  It was the first time, ever, that a sitting U.S. President, Barack H. Obama, said that he is in favor of same-sex marriage.  (Before this, he’d only said that his beliefs were “evolving.”)

Here’s a link (which includes a link to the video interview with ABC News reporter Robin Roberts):

http://gma.yahoo.com/blogs/abc-blogs/president-obama-affirms-his-support-for-same-sex-marriage.html

Here’s a few words from the President as to why he’s changed his position:

“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors, when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together; when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama told Roberts in an interview to appear on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday.

While I’m glad the President has come out in favor of same-sex marriage, the timing of this announcement seems a bit odd.  Earlier in the week, Vice President Joe Biden was castigated because he said he was in favor of same-sex marriage (here’s a link to an excellent article at the Christian Science Monitor if you don’t believe me), and actually had to backtrack.  Yet now, on Wednesday — a day after the President was embarrassed in West Virginia as a convicted felon who didn’t even live in the state garnered 41% of the vote in the Democratic primary — the President has admitted that, just as Biden said last week on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Obama indeed is in favor of marriage equality (marriage for all people regardless of sexual orientation, which obviously includes same-sex marriage).

Still, it’s great that Obama has come out in favor of marriage equality regardless of the timing.  It is historic, and it should give my friends in the GLBT community hope that, sooner rather than later, they will be able to marry the person of their choice.  That is the right message to be sending in the 21st Century, even if Obama’s Republican opponent, Willard “Mitt” Romney, strongly disagrees.