There is plenty to criticize from the left about the limitations of President Obama’s endowment of marriage equality.
Yes, he did the political calculus. Yes, his endorsement comes late in the game. Yes, it lacks any practical, legislative oomph.
But, and this is important, it carries massive symbolic weight. The first black president becomes the first sitting president to support gays’ and lesbians’ right to marry.
Frank Bruni, in a column on nytimes.com, describes the “emotional importance” of the president’s statement to Robyn Roberts.
I find myself thinking about all the teenagers and young adults out there who cower in silence because they worry about being ostracized if they speak the truth about their sexual orientation. I think about the ones who are bullied, even the ones who contemplate taking their own lives.
And I think about what it will mean to them to hear the president say what he did today, not because they’re focused on marriage but because they’re buoyed by any and every reassurance that there’s nothing wrong with them, nothing inferior about them. Today their president gave them that reassurance.
I think about how it would have felt to me when I was 16, and fearful, and often deeply, deeply depressed, to hear a president say what ours did today. I can’t imagine it. In the three decades since, our country has traveled an enormous distance, and today is a poignant and compelling marker of that.
And this is what it is about.
Hank Kalet 