President Barack Obama on Monday became the first president to use the word “gay” in an inaugural address in reference to sexual orientation, making two references to gay rights as he began his second term.
“Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law — for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well,” Obama said during his speech.
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POLITICO searched all prior inaugural addresses online and found no previous uses of the word “gay” in regard to sexual orientation.
Obama also invoked the Stonewall Riots, a historic event in the gay rights movement, coupling it to references to signature legendary moments in the civil rights and women’s suffrage movements. The riots were sparked by a 1969 police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in Greenwich Village.
“We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths — that all of us are created equal — is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall,” Obama said.
Immediate after the speech, commentators said Obama’s references to the gay rights movement were historic for a president.
“For a president who only recently, to use his word, evolved on the issue of same-sex marriage, he made very forceful statements in this inaugural address, actually, historic statements on equal rights for gay and lesbian Americans,” said CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who is openly gay.
“Putting in the same category Seneca Falls back in 1848 when a Women’s’ rights convention was held there, in Selma, Alabama, 1965, when Alabama state troops attacked civil rights marchers, in those same category as Seneca Falls and Selma, he put Stonewall, the Stonewall Uprising which took place in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1969 on June 27 when police raided a small gay bar called The Stonewall and tenants and patrons at that bar fought back,” he continued. “And that was really the spark the modern day civil rights movement for gay and lesbian Americans, and he went on to talk about gay and lesbian Americans, saying ‘our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law, for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.’ I think that’s the first time … in an inaugural address where gay and lesbian Americans were particularly cited.”