President Obama: Time To Make "The Transition"

 

By David Mixner -

The clock is now ticking for President Obama to make the transition to full marriage equality. The closer we get to the 2012 elections the more difficult it will be for the President to finally embrace marriage equality. That is just a political fact of life. Believe it or not, the first caucus for the 2012 election is just 11 months away.

Every indication we have from the White House is that he is in the process of making marriage equality a part of his platform. We learned from the painful but successful process with DADT that sooner is better. We can avoid the pain and anger that we experienced in the DADT debate by the President aggressively leading this time around instead of waiting until the last possible second. That one gave me too many gray hairs!

There is no way President Obama can proceed into the 2012 election and expect enthusiastic support from the LGBT community if he is still proclaiming marriage is between a man and a woman. At this stage of the struggle, you are either for marriage equality or against it. There are no gray areas. If he just embraces civil unions again, he is clearly declaring that there should be two levels of marriages - one for straights and one for the LGBT community. That is simply not acceptable.
Even more importantly we could be facing an epic election in Maryland on the marriage equality issue and his voice is critical. He must come to the table with clean hands. In Proposition 8 his statements that marriage is between a man and a woman were used against us even though he opposed the initiative. Those words were also used against us in the last election. We can't afford mixed messages in the Maryland campaign.
He must come forward soon and lead on this issue.

for more from David visit Live from Hell's Kitchen.

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