But mr obama wouldnt that make you gay

Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. It was the spring ofback when Barack Obama's bid for the presidency seemed quixotic at best.

I'd seen Obama speak to a crowd and was impressed but wanted to see if what I'd seen from afar held up under closer scrutiny. So I asked to attend a private fundraiser in a tony apartment in Georgetown. I promised not to write anything. I just wanted to see the man up close and get a better sense of him and his character.

At one point in the question-and-answer session, a woman looked him square in the eyes with what can only be called maternal grit. It's so disappointing to me. I really do. But the word 'marriage' stirs up so much religious feeling. I think civil unions are the way to go.

As long as they are equal.

Andrew Sullivan on Barack Obama's Gay Marriage Evolution

My heart sank. Was this obviously humane African-American actually advocating a "separate but equal" solution—a form of marital segregation like the one that made his own parents' marriage a felony in many states when he was born? Hadn't he already declared he supported marriage equality when he was running for the Illinois Senate in ?

The administration now claims that the questionnaire from the gay Chicago paper Outlines had been answered in type—not Obama's writing—by somebody else. Hadn't Jeremiah Wright's church actually been a rare supporter of marriage equality among black churches? The sudden equivocation made no sense—except as pure political calculation.

And yet it also felt strained, as if he knew it didn't quite fit. He wanted equality but not marriage—but you cannot have one without the other. On this issue, Obama's excruciating nonposition was essentially "Yes we can't. I thought he was struggling between political calculation and his core belief in civil rights.

And it was then that I realized he was both: a cold, steely, ruthless, calculating politician who nonetheless wanted to do the right thing in the end. Last week he did it—in a move whose consequences are simply impossible to judge. White House sources told me that after the interview with ABC News, the president felt as if a weight had been lifted off him.

Yes, he was bounced into it by Joe Biden, the lovable Irish-Catholic rogue who couldn't help but tell the truth about his own views on TV only to be immediately knocked down by David Axelrod on Twitter. But Obama had been planning to endorse gay marriage before his reelection for a while.

White House sources say that if Obama had been a state senator in New York last year when the Albany legislature legalized gay marriage, he'd have voted in favor. But no one asked.