James Fallows - On Obama's Gay Marriage Announcement - The Atlantic

My sentiments, exactly.  So nice to have James Fallows thinking and writing for me.  Makes it so much easier for me. - GWC
James Fallows - Authors - The Atlantic:

"... I am surprisingly moved by Barack Obama's discussion just now of his "evolved" position on same-sex marriage. I agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates's immediate reaction: that this was a particularly notable, humane, and leader-like stand for him to take on the day after North Carolina's landslide vote for Amendment One and against same-sex marriage.

This is a field where I understand the concept of "evolution." When I was a school kid, in the small-town America of the 1950s and 1960s, I had many gay friends -- but of course didn't know that, because it was undiscussable at the time. I am painfully embarrassed at thinking of the commonplace fag/queer jokes and schoolyard taunts of that time, but of course not as pained as my friends who had to laugh along with them.

It was not until I was in college that I was aware of having gay friends -- and over the years, as my wife and I have celebrated their marriages (where that was legal) and their non-married partnerships (where it was not), I've come to understand that it is pointless, cruel, unfair, and wrong to deny them the satisfactions, and responsibilities, of committed married life. And as for the idea that same-sex marriage is a "threat" to the stability of marriage as a whole: Come on! I defy anyone to demonstrate that it cracks the top 100 list of forces eroding the institution of marriage. "

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