Newsweek names Obama as the first ‘gay’ president
Within days of President Obama formally declaring his support for equal marriage, the American magazine Newsweek has named him the first ‘gay’ president in its front cover.
The cover story is being penned by Andrew Sullivan, the conservative blogger who, in the 2008 elections supported Mr Obama.
The website Politico has obtained the following preview from the article:
It’s easy to write off President Obama’s announcement of his support for gay marriage as a political ploy during an election year. But don’t believe the cynics. Andrew Sullivan argues that this announcement has been in the making for years. “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.” And President Obama has much in common with the gay community. “He had to discover his black identity and then reconcile it with his white family, just as gays discover their homosexual identity and then have to reconcile it with their heterosexual family,” Sullivan writes.
Newsweek however is not the only magazine to put this as their cover story. The New Yorker also has a rainbow coloured front-page on its forthcoming issue.
Mitt Romney, the presumptive Republican contender for the elections, has reaffirmed his opposition to equal marriage during a convocation at one of the largest Christian private colleges in the US, Liberty University.