Two gay dads and their kids played a small but significant role in the evolution of President Obama and his administration on marriage equality.
In “How the President Got to ‘I Do’ on Same-Sex Marriage,” a long but worthwhile article in the New York Times Magazine, investigative reporter Jo Becker explains that in April 2012, before the president or anyone in his administration had expressed public support for marriage equality, Vice President Joe Biden was at a gathering of gay Democrats at the home of HBO executive Michael Lombardo and his husband, architect Sonny Ward. Also present was Chad Griffin, who had created the American Foundation for Equal Rights to fight California’s Prop 8 (and is now head of HRC). Griffin wasn’t planning to ask Biden about the administration’s stance on marriage equality, but changed his mind when he saw the hosts’ children, ages five and seven, offering Biden flowers and a note. (Here’s a photo of the kids and the vice president at the event.) He therefore asked the vice president to talk about his own view on the issue.
Becker relates that Biden said:
I look at those two beautiful kids. I wish everybody could see this. All you got to do is look in the eyes of those kids. And no one can wonder, no one can wonder whether or not they are cared for and nurtured and loved and reinforced. And folks, what’s happening is, everybody is beginning to see it.
Some of the guests were surprised he said this when the official administration position was to oppose marriage equality. One observed, “He’d been answering that question the same way for years. But being in that house, seeing that couple with their kids, the switch flipped. It was like his hard drive got erased.”
This isn’t a new revelation of the event. CNN reported on it just after it happened. Becker disputes CNN’s interpretation that Biden’s remarks were a planned “trial balloon” for the issue, however. She says the administration was caught off guard by the vice president’s unscripted remarks. Griffin’s question and Biden’s answer “inadvertently set off a chain reaction. Obama and his team knew that he had to take a stand, soon, or risk looking as if he were ‘leading from behind,’” Becker reports.
Within weeks, the president himself announced his support, relating that his own daughters had friends with same-sex parents and “I know it wouldn’t dawn on them that their friends’ parents should be treated differently.”
All this goes to show — never underestimate the power of kids.
[Update: Andrew Sullivan, a man I don’t always agree with, has some criticisms of Becker’s overall approach to the history of marriage equality in her longer book on the subject— in particular, how she overlooks the groundwork done by himself, Evan Wolfson, and others before Griffin came on the scene. I haven’t read the book myself, so I can’t comment, except to say that such omissions would be unfortunate. Even if Sullivan’s remarks about himself may seem to be self-serving (rightly or wrongly), no history of marriage equality should ignore Evan Wolfson’s contribution. Regardless, Biden’s remarks about the two boys and marriage equality were still, I believe, a turning point, even if they rested on a well-laid foundation.]