There is something incredibly affirming and powerful about hearing your President speak directly in support of you as a full-fledged citizen for the first time. It’s something straight people have had always, and that they have sometimes taken for granted, but when you’ve never had a President in office say that – on your behalf – it means more than I thought it would.
In the wake of the news in North Carolina, to hear our President proclaim unequivocally – at last, and once and for all – that he supports gay marriage, is a galvanizing and monumental moment. It is an act of forward-thinking progress, political courage, and history-making fortitude.
It may be damaging politically, and it may tilt a tight election the wrong way, but it was the right thing to do, and as such President Obama will rightfully, and proudly, be written into the history books, whether the prejudiced people like it or not, as a champion of all citizens, regardless of race, religion, natural origin, gender, or sexual orientation.
This is history. This is real. This is now. And this is major.
Pay attention – because what just happened in North Carolina will be seen as an act as backwards as sending Rosa Parks to the back of the bus, as mindless as denying women the right to vote, and as shameful as beating Matthew Shepard to death. To argue with this is to argue against love, and I defy anyone to take such a stance and stand behind it with any semblance of reason.
It’s time to pay this President the same respect that you would pay any President in office. There is no excuse for ever having done otherwise. President Obama, I stand behind you, and I thank you for representing the finest values of freedom for which this country has always stood.
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