Barack Obama: A Journey From Humble Beginnings To Historic Leadership

It was the spring of 2007, back when Barack Obama's bid for the presidency seemed quixotic at best. I had seen Obama speak to a crowd and was impressed, but I wanted to see if what I had 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. "My son is gay," she said, and the room went suddenly quiet. "I don't understand why you don't support his right to marry the person he loves. It's so disappointing to me." Obama, without losing eye contact for a second, told her: "I want full equality for your son—all the rights and benefits that marriage brings. 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."

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 1996? (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." And yet somehow, simply by the way he answered that mother's question, I didn't believe it. 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. The "make news" reveal was scheduled for The View. In the end, scrambling to catch up with his veep, he turned to his fellow ESPN fan, Robin Roberts, a Christian African American from Mississippi, to quell the sudden kerfuffle. Even this was calculated: to have this moment occur between two African Americans would help Obama calm opposition within parts of the black community.

The interview, by coincidence, came the day after North Carolina voted emphatically to ban all rights for gay couples in the state constitution. For gay Americans and their families, the emotional darkness of Tuesday night became a canvas on which Obama could paint a widening dawn. But I didn't expect it. Like many others, I braced myself for disappointment. And yet when I watched the interview, the tears came flooding down. The moment reminded me of my own wedding day. I had figured it out in my head, but not my heart. And I was utterly unprepared for how psychologically transformative the moment would be. To have the president of the United States affirm my humanity—and the humanity of all gay Americans—was, unexpectedly, a watershed. He shifted the mainstream in one interview. And last week, a range of Democratic leaders—from Harry Reid to Steny Hoyer—backed the president, who moved an entire party behind a position that only a few years ago was regarded as simply preposterous. And in response, Mitt Romney could only stutter.

There was, of course, cold politics behind it. One in six of Obama's fundraising bundlers is gay, and he needs their money. Wall Street has not backed him financially this year the way it did in 2008. A few Jewish donors have held back over Israel. And when Obama announced recently that he would not issue an executive order barring antigay discrimination for federal contractors, the gay donors all but threatened to leave him high and dry. The unity and intensity of the gay power brokers—absent in the defensive crouch of the Clinton years—proved that FDR's maxim still applied: "I agree with you, I want to do it, now make me do it."

If money was one factor making the move necessary, the youth vote—essential to his demographic coalition and overwhelmingly pro–marriage equality—clinched the logic of it. The under-30s were looking worryingly apathetic, especially compared with 2008. This would fire them back up. And by taking a position directly counter to that of Mitt Romney, who favors a constitutional amendment to ban all rights for gay couples across the entire country, Obama advanced his key strategy to winning in the fall: to make this a choice election. If it is a choice election, he wins. If it is a referendum on the last four years of economic crisis, he could lose. And last week, especially after The Washington Post broke the news of Romney's adolescent assault on a gay student, the choice could not have been starker.

The latest Gallup poll, moreover, offered another incentive. Marriage equality is now supported by half of Americans in polls. But more important is the nature of the support. Sixty-five percent of Democrats back marriage equality, compared with only 22 percent of Republicans. But independents favor gay marriage by 57 percent—far closer to the Democrats than the GOP. So it's been confirmed: gay rights is indeed a wedge issue. But now—unlike 2004—it's a wedge issue for the Democrats. Women, too, are more supportive of marriage equality—a further shoring up of the gender gap already widened by the spring's chatter about contraception. Catholics? Whatever the bishops say, Catholics are second only to Jews in their support for gay marriage. Biden speaks for a lot of them.

All these are reasons to be skeptical of Obama's motives, of how long it took, of whether this is pure and late opportunism. But when you step back a little and assess the record of Obama on gay rights, you see, in fact, that this was not an aberration. It was an inevitable culmination of three years of work. He did this the way he always does: leading from behind and playing the long game. He learned from Clinton that tackling this issue up front would only backfire, especially in a recession. So he bided his time. His first step was getting rid of the HIV travel ban, already signed by Bush, but not yet implemented. Again, the process dragged on for months—but the White House insisted it was better to have everything in perfect legal order so the change could not be challenged. It came through.

Then he endured a hazing by gay activists and writers (including me) on his slow pace on gays in the military. But we were wrong. He made the brilliant calculation that he would not push it right away, as Clinton did, and he would not be the front person to advocate the change. Adm. Michael Mullen would do it, backed by Republican Defense Secretary Bob Gates. By bringing the military top brass and Gates slowly on board, he out