Written: 5/25/2012
President Obama made history when he announced that he supports marriage equality, the first sitting president to do so. It’s pretty amazing, and I really like to think it’s a big turning point in acceptance.
I also like to think about the people across the country, struggling with their sexuality, knowing that the president supports them (I hate the term “ruler of the free world,” it seems ethnocentric to me, but I digress). I like to think that it will make a difference in their lives, and help a weight lift from their shoulders.
Andrew Sullivan had the cover-story at Newsweek, which you can read here. Here is my favorite quote:
The core gay experience throughout history has been displacement, a sense of belonging and yet not belonging. Gays are born mostly into heterosexual families and discover as they grow up that, for some reason, they will never be able to have a marriage like their parents’ or their siblings’. They know this before they can tell anyone else, even their parents. This sense of subtle alienation—of loving your own family while feeling excluded from it—is something all gay children learn. They sense something inchoate, a separateness from their peers, a subtle estrangement from their families, the first sharp pangs of shame. And then, at some point, they find out what it all means. In the past, they often would retreat and withdraw, holding a secret they couldn’t even share with their parents—living as an insider outsider.
And there is a special LGBT Obama site, which includes this pretty neat video:
Progress takes time, more time than it should, especially when we’re talking about (my) civil rights. But it’s still amazing to see progress made in front of my eyes.
All my best,
The King of Spades
