Obama Says I Do!

Today's endorsement of gay marriage by President Obama takes me back to election day in 2008...

After turning in my ballot, canvassing all day against Proposition 8, I came home to a robo call on my voice mail in favor of Prop 8 with a sound byte from Barak Obama saying "I believe marriage is between a man and a woman". Less than 15 minutes later Obama gave his acceptance speach and Prop 8 had passed. It was an extremely bitter sweet day.

I wrote an open letter to the President Elect expressing my frustrations saying "I will be watching you, my daughter will be watching you. I hope you understand that it won't be until people in public office on a national level do the right thing, like Abraham Lincoln did, and take a stand against discrimination that this kind of discrimination will not go away.Until politicians believe and understand that civil unions are not the same as marriages and that the 1100+ federal rights that married couples are granted must be granted to any couple that wants to marry, regardless of gender, this kind divisiveness will remain the standard."

Flash forward to today, after 4 years of watching him keep his promises -- he signed The Matthew Shepart Act, dismantled DADT, stopped defending DOMA in Federal Court...  for the first time a sitting US President has publicly declared that he has realized that civil unions are not the same, that same sex couples should be able to get married and that is HUGE.

Some may label this as election politics. Frankly, I don't care if it's election politics or not. For the first time in history a sitting US President,VP, Secretary of State (all in the same administration) have all essentially said back-to-back, "Gay people should have full equality, in everything". This is a sign that the times they are a changin'.  I have no reason not to believe what The President said today. I believe that they all believe in what they are saying, regardless of timing.   President Obama has done more for LGBT rights than all previous Presidents put together. I have no doubt that he will continue the momentum in a second term. And if he loses the election, he's played a huge part in moving things forward, making it difficult for 1940's style fear and hate of gay people in the guise of religion to backlash and come back.  This is happening, people!

Some will argue that the economy is more important, that he should not be wasting time on morning shows just to announce that he's coming out in favor of gay marriage. The moving the ecomomy forward is extremely important. I don't see how taking less than an hour of time to make a public statment about a very hot tobpic in the public debate is harmful to his working on the economy.  And if you think about it, the economy is going to get better over the next few years no matter who is president. It's on an upswing, in large part due to the triage that the Obama Administration pushed through after the financial mess that took place during Bush/Cheny era.

For me, after an entire lifetime of being worried for my own legal protection, for the protection of my family, I have hope. After the last election built on hope, only to feel let down, I finally have hope that this will happen in my lifetime. I don't think that even tea baggers can stop this momentum now.  Tea Dance any one?