The odds are improving that President Obama will endorse marriage equality before the November election, according to an informed source.

The chances that Obama will make such an announcement before the election are looking better than in previous months as the issue receives growing media attention and voters in a handful of states face ballot initiatives this year.

An informed source, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity, said “active conversations” are taking place between the White House and the campaign about whether Obama should complete his evolution on marriage and that the chances of him making an announcement are about 50-50.

Full Story from The Washington Blade

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President Obama has been called on the carpet yet again by some gay activists for not forcefully and unequivocally saying “I support gay marriage.”

This doesn’t mean simply his backing full equality, civil rights, and civil unions for gays, or support for gays in the military, calls on UN to end discrimination against gays,making supportive speeches to gay rights groups, or strongly opposing the seemingly never ending ballot initiatives and legislative efforts to outlaw gay marriage. He’s done all of that. No, he must say the words “I support gay marriage” to fully satisfy some gay rights activists. The “some” is a crucial qualifier. Many gay rights activists understand that a GOP White House would be beyond a horror. GOP Presidential contender Mitt Romney would subtly and GOP Presidential contender Rick Santorum would openly back any and every anti-gay rights initiative measure, and piece of legislation any and everywhere in the country. But the president is different. He is clearly a friend of gay rights movement, and an African-American so therefore more, much more, is expected of him.

However, the 2012 election will be, as it was in 2008, a numbers, not a percentage game. This means that Obama must not just get a majority of gay votes which he’s assured of. It means he must stir passion, excitement, and enthusiasm among gay voters as he did in 2008. This translates directly into numbers, and in the key battleground states of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Florida with a large number of gay voters and an even larger number of conservative Christian evangelical voters, any slack off in the number of gay voters that turn out in November would be a hard blow to the president.

Full Story from Eurweb

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Like a pesky hurricane season or annual allergy affliction, self-appointed marriage-equality machers are once again commanding our commander-in-chief to “evolve already” in his support for same-sex marriage. This time it’s Joe Sudbay, the AMERICAblog editor who originally elicited President Obama’s now famous “attitudes evolve, including mine” retort just over 500 days ago. Writing for this site, Sudbay scolds the president for holding tight on the marriage question while issuing a litany of doomsy prognostics if he fails to evolve immediately.

Trading original thinking for boilerplate bombast, Sudbay regurgitates the same-same set of facts, stats, and figures employed by his boredom-inducing brethren in the quest to attack Obama’s inaction: that the president is behind popular “progressive” sentiment; that he risks alienating his LGBT/leftist base; and that anti-equality types will vote against him regardless of how he evolves. As Sudbay sees it, with marriage equality a likely anchor of this summer’s Democratic Party platform and a given in 2016′s election cycle, the president’s evolution is essential for party cohesion, effective media messaging, and all-around progressive good cheer.

The problem with Sudbay’s calculus, beyond its painful banality, is that it’s all theory and little action. Deadened by demands and laden with soulless simplicity, Sudbay’s self-serving missive fails to account for the very real, and still very uncertain, political pathway ahead. Sure, he acknowledges that “rhetorical gay-bashing will be a regular element of [the GOP] nominee’s campaign.” But his lack of critical, and certainly intellectual, analysis renders this statement both hollow and hapless. By minimizing the Republican threat, Sudbay hopes to maximize the president’s own personal shortcomings while insinuating the (false) existence of political parity on the marriage debate.

Full Story from The Huffington Post

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