Yesterday, Barack Obama came out of the closet and acknowledged what we’d all suspected for a long, long time: he supports extending the civil recognition of marriage to same-sex couples. As you might expect, this has been hailed as a bold and risky and courageous move even though, as the chart above demonstrates, Obama is following public opinion, not leading it. His own position, he says, has “evolved” and he’s been mocked for putting the matter in those terms even though, as the chart shows again, the US population as a whole has “evolved” in pretty much the same way.
Of course, it’s probable that Obama has long-supported gay-marriage but has only recently been able to say so. Moreover, the extent f his commitment to it should not be exagerrated: he supports gay-marriage but believes it should be a matter for the individual states, not the federal government. Which means, in effect, that he doesn’t support gay-marriage as strongly as he supports almost everything else he believes in.
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