Newsweek: Obama ‘The First Gay President’

Author Toni Morrison anointed President Bill Clinton “America’s First Black President,” and in a play on that title and what is sure to be a controversial move, “Newsweek” has namedPresident Barack Obama, America’s “First Gay President,” reports Politico.

“Newsweek” released the following preview of a piece by Andrew Sullivan analyzing Obama’s announcement on marriage equality:

“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.”

S**t? Meet Fan.

Black America has been turned on it’s head in the wake of “The Announcement” with civil rights and religious leaders such as Rev. Al Sharpton coming out in full support of the president and others, like Pastor Jamal Bryant, saying that they feel betrayed. Professor Michael Eric Dyson joined in the fray when he served as guest host on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” and called out religious “bigots” as “sexual rednecks.” Add to that half-way critics who are pitting the Black community against the LGBT community, as  if they don’t intertwine, and the situation has become combustible.

In an blog earlier this week, Sullivan articulated his unwavering support for the president’s move:

I do not know how orchestrated this was; and I do not know how calculated it is. What I know is that, absorbing the news, I was uncharacteristically at a loss for words for a while, didn’t know what to write, and, like many Dish readers, there are tears in my eyes.