M&C Blog: An Evolving Nation

Married and Counting begins with a quote from Dennis Kucinich, who endorsed marriage equality in 2004 as he sought the Democratic presidential nomination. At that time, such a radical position was too far outside the mainstream for anyone but a fringe candidate.


Less than a decade later, the President of the United States has said "I think same-sex couples should be able to get married." Mitt Romney (who supports a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage) described the President's change as "flip-flopping." He might as well have leveled that charge at the American people as a whole. As a nation we have changed our minds from overwhelmingly opposing same-sex marriage just a few years ago, to favoring it now by a small margin.


President Obama's "evolving" position is in keeping with the evolving position of Abraham Lincoln on slavery, or JFK and LBJ's evolving positions on civil rights. The great champions of equality haven't been people born with ideas ahead of their times. They've been people who arrived at those ideas through personal growth, and convinced the nation to grow with them.