Obama literally deserves no credit for the Supreme Court ruling...
This is buggin'.
Like saying Kennedy literally deserves no credit for civil rights because he wasn't the one to actually push through any legislative act.
It's far more complex than that. Like the rainbow that has come to represent the gay community - how we got here is not black and white.
To be fair, yes, a whole lot of activists, both gay and straight, who have been fighting this fight for a generation, deserve immense credit. Jim Obergefell deserves immense credit (though, he'll happily credit Obama, too) - as do the judges, the five justices who voted to strike down the ban.
But so does Pres. Obama.
I think there's a disconnect between how we remember the last few years and how the last few years really were.
In 2012, at the height of the presidential election, Pres. Obama came out in support of marriage equality. Some took a cynical view of his announcement - but while it ultimately didn't matter in the election, there was no guarantee Obama's endorsement of marriage equality wouldn't have cost him the election at the time.
Coming out in support of it in 2012 was not necessarily brave - but it wasn't safe, either. The political move would have been to push it as far as possible, beyond 2012, so as to not make it an issue. Why? Because, even in 2012, most polls suggested that barely a majority - if not a plurality - of the country supported marriage equality. It was not a slam dunk issue. The country, still evolving, was almost completely split down the middle.
Pres. Obama also had a very narrow race to win - and it meant that any loss of support could be the difference between victory and defeat.
In Virginia, a state Obama would eventually win that November, the support was uncertain. In fact, a PPP poll in July, 2011, less than a year before Pres. Obama's announcement, showed only 35% of Virginians thought same-sex marriage should be legal.
In December, 34% thought so.
Before Obama's announcement - the number was 41% - still below a majority.
After he announced, though, a sea change happened - by the end of the year, a solid majority of Virginians supported marriage equality.
I don't want to credit Obama fully, but I believe his announcing helped move the needle.
The thing is, he could not have predicted, at that point, it would have. It was just as possible it could have backfired and ultimately cost him the election. Then who knows the course we take on this ever evolving journey?
Even when he opposed marriage equality, Obama was still a fierce advocate for equality. He opposed Prop 8, pushed for the overturning of DADT (which was supported by the Republican Party) and DOMA (again, supported by the GOP at the time) and put forth an aggressive agenda to help push LGBTQ rights.
That helped.
But most underrated has been the White House's defense of overturning the bans. Donald Verrilli, the Solicitor General of the United States, a man appointed by Obama and then at Obama's discretion, was a huge brick in the long path to equality.
Here's a good article from spring on how valuable he was in this debate.
Maybe nothing changes if Obama loses to John McCain in 2008. But is that a risk anyone would have wanted to take back then - the off chance that everything was set no matter what?
I'm doubtful.
In the end, like the President said, marriage equality came like a thunderbolt - a bolt helped by the support of his administration basically from day one.
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