In an interview with ABC News, Barack Obama today became the first sitting U. S. President to endorse marriage equality:
“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,” Obama told Roberts, in an interview to appear on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday. Excerpts of the interview will air tonight on ABC’s “World News with Diane Sawyer.”
The New York Times report is here.
The Rev. Canon Susan Russell writes:
As a priest and pastor my commitment to marriage equality is grounded in my belief that the values that make up a marriage transcend the gender of the partners married to each other, that what God cares about is not our sexual orientation but our theological orientation, and that the question the church should be asking is not whom you love but whether you love. And so I was particularly gratified to read that President Obama addressed the faith-based component of his own “evolved” support for marriage equality with these words:
When [Michelle and I] think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule and treating others the way you would want to be treated. And I think that’s what we try to impart to our kids, and that’s what motivates me as President, and I figure the most consistent I can be in being true to those precepts, the better I’ll be as a as a dad and a husband, and hopefully the better I’ll be as president.