http://cdnapi.kaltura.com/index.php/kwidget/wid/0_3lh7hnon/uiconf_id/6501142Finally. After several years of trying to straddle the issue, endorsing equality but only within a separate status for gays and lesbians, President Obama has finally gotten on the right side of history.
In a sit-down interview with ABC’s Robin Roberts, Obama completed what has been a markedly long and oft-mocked evolution on the matter.
“I’ve always been adamant that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally,” Obama told Roberts, in an interview that will air in full on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday.
“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,” he said.
Again, what took him so long? The answer, of course, is politics. Obama viewed his support for equality — which he expressed as support for same-sex marriage way back in the 1990s when he represented an overwhelmingly liberal state district in Illinois — as incompatible with his ability to win and maintain the highest office in the land. So his position evolved, much the same way we have watched the moderate Mitt Romney evolve.
Luckily, Obama’s ultimate evolution led him in the right direction, ending with an endorsement of same-sex marriage, making him the only sitting president to come out in favor of marriage equality.
History will remember him for that.
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On a side note, Dahlia Lithwick, Slate’s legal correspondent, offered what may be the best line on the announcement. Writing on her Facebook page, Lithwick said,
ok it’s been 90 minutes and my marriage still feels pretty solid. anyone else????
Mine seems pretty solid, too.
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Hank Kalet 
Let me understand. Religions want us to be married so we can produce additional parishioners. Women want to be married so they feel secure. Men want to be married so they don't have to pay child support. Parents want us to be married so they have grandchildren to spoil. Gays want to be married because they want to be treated equally. Leave it to Politicians to make this a bigger issue then it really needs to be. Then again, what would we have expected from a group that can't even keep their promises.