Obama’s Touching Reaction to the Supreme Court’s Gay Marriage Ruling Will Break Your Heart

“It’s a victory for the allies and friends and supports who spent years and even decades working and praying for change to come.”

 

President Obama welcomed Friday morning’s Supreme Court decision clearing the way for marriage equality across the nation, hailing it as a crowning moment in a long, sometimes bitter struggle for LGBT civil rights in America. “It’s a victory for the allies and friends and supporters who spent years and even decades working and praying for change to come,” he said. “I know a change for many of our LGBT brothers and sisters must have seemed so slow for so long,” he continued, but added that the decision is evidence that “real change is possible…shifts in hearts and minds is possible.”

“Sometimes there are days like this, when that slow, steady effort is rewarded with justice that arrives like a thunderbolt,” he said.

While recognizing the impact of today’s decision from the court, Obama said this struggle for justice has also involved “countless small acts of courage” from the LGBT community—including the simple, and scary act of coming out to “parents who loved their children no matter what.” The decision owes credit to “folks who were willing to endure bullying and taunts, and stayed strong, and came to believe in themselves and who they were,” he said.

Watch highlights from his address from the White House above.

Read our full coverage of the decision here. You can also read some of the most outlandish statements in Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent here.

 

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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