President Obama told a crowd of LGBT activists that the political tide has now fully reversed on gay marriage and other gay rights issues over the last decade.
“A decade ago politicians ran against LGBT rights,” he said Wednesday evening. “Today they are running towards them.”
The president was addressing a crowd of nearly 200 celebrating LGBT Pride month at the White House, and like them, said he was awaiting the Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage, expected within days.
“There are a few decisions coming down in the next few days that I am paying close attention to, but however the decision comes down on the marriage issue, one thing is undeniable: There has been this incredible shift in attitudes across the country,” he said.
In making the statement, Obama could have been speaking about his own evolution. The president’s position on gay marriage has shifted dramatically since running for Senate in 2004, when he said he supported civil unions but said his religion dictated that marriage be defined as between one man and one woman.
He reaffirmed that view while in the Senate and during his 2008 campaign when he stated that he would not back an amendment to the Constitution to define marriage because he believed it was a matter better left to the states.
In his first year as president, Obama issued a presidential memorandum declaring the same rights given to married, opposite sex couples would be extended to same-sex couples. In the fall of that same year, he spoke to a Human Rights Campaign dinner and compared the issues of gay rights to those blacks faced during early in their fight for civil rights.
Nearly a year later, Obama delivered a seminal speech in which he said his views on the issue of gay marriage were evolving, and a few months later, he announced that the Justice Department would not be defending the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law that allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages granted under the laws of other states.
