By Lisa Conley
Round Table editor-in-chief

President Barack Obama recently expressed his support for same-sex marriage, becoming the first president to ever do so. Obama’s announcement was all-but-expected after Vice President Joseph Biden declared his support for marriage equality on NBC’s Meet the Press, yet it still resounded heavily across the nation.

With the presidential election a sheer seven months away, taking a firm stance on what is considered to be a controversial issue was an undeniably risky move, but a move nonetheless. Although Obama’s support for same-sex marriage may cost him the votes of the more socially conservative democrats, it will undoubtedly gain him approval from members of the LGBT community.

This approval is vital since, according to MSNBC, some gay and liberal donors were threatening to withdrawal their financial support from Obama’s campaign due to his “refusal to sign an executive order barring discrimination of gays and lesbians in federal contracting”, making Obama’s timing in announcing his support for marriage equality opportune.

Throughout his campaign, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been relentlessly criticized for reversing his opinion on several issues, yet Obama is now doing the same. Simply because he uses euphemistic terms like “evolve” does not change the fact that Obama’s current support for same-sex marriage is a complete reversal of the position he took during the 2008 campaign.

Politicians are allowed to change their position on an issue, but those changes should be acknowledged, not ignored or passed off as something else (evolution, perhaps?). If Romney is a flip-flopper, as many claim him to be, then so too is Obama and any other politician who has ever experienced a change of heart. 

I completely support Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage; however, what I do not support is the time and manner in which he chose to disclose it.