The right greeted President Obama's unqualified endorsement of gay marriage with predictably vile caterwauling. And of course many on the left whined that it came too late, that it shouldn't have been couched as "evolving" (the usually dependable Andrew Rosenthal) and that heretofore the general position on the "great civil rights issue of our time" (Bob Moser) taken by the man who ended Don't Ask/Don't Tell and supported the DOJ decision to not enforce DOMA had been cowardly (the once great Frank Rich). And, the Log Cabin Republicans even shrieked that the referendum outcome in North Carolina would have been different had Obama spoken up earlier. (As was pointed out in a New Yorker article earlier this year, there is no reason to think that and every reason to believe that an earlier endorsement would have been counterproductive.)
Some day in the not-too-distant future, marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman will seem as natural as waking up in the morning. The North Carolina referendum will have been forgotten, but President Obama's words will be remembered as a turning point. You don't have to take my word for it, but ignore history at your peril.
Today, Franklin Roosevelt is lionized by what remains of the American left, and rightly so. The Nation still markets itself with Roosevelt's image and words, and pines nostalgically for the New Deal. What's forgotten is that New Deal programs were generally segregated or for whites only. Or that one reason that FDR didn't pursue universal health care was because southern Democrats, fearing integrated hospitals, opposed it. Or that he didn't integrate the armed forces even to win a world war.
Lyndon Johnson is remembered as the great civil rights president, and he should be. But before 1964, he was regarded by liberals and the left as southern racist who had opposed anti-lynching legislation and whose 1957 civil rights bill was so watered down that it was arguably worse than nothing. Today we know that Johnson was playing one of the great long games of American politics.
Twenty years ago, the chances of a president supporting gay marriage were about as great as that same president being black. We won. What's the point in griping about the last bend in the road?