Speaking to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House Monday night after returning from a trip to Houston, President Joe Biden was asked about his legacy and gay rights. He responded by telling an alleged story from his childhood.
"Mr. President, how about your legacy for LGBTQ Americans?" a reporter asked as Biden left Marine One.
"Well, I’m really proud of my position. I was the first guy to come out for gay marriage. Remember that little problem with the Obama administration? And, look, my dad had a simple proposition. God’s truth. My dad was dropping me off to get a license to be a lifeguard in the city of Wilmington, the projects."
"As I get out of the car and , Rodney Square, it’s called, the center of the city, someone from the DuPont company and the Hercules company, two large companies that are in buildings adjacent to one another, and I’m getting out of the car, and these two guys leaned up and kissed one another. I’d never seen that before," he continued. "And I looked to my dad, and he said, 'Joey, it’s simple. They love each other. It’s simple.' That’s my position."
Despite his claims of accepting gay marriage as a child, Biden didn't come out in favor of it as a politician until 2012.
"Barack Obama nor I support redefining from a civil side what constitutes marriage," Biden said during a vice presidential debate against Governor Sarah Palin in 2008.
Biden changed his position when Obama was up for reelection in 2012. From POLITICO:
Few living Americans have spent as much time under the cameras of political talk shows as Joe Biden, but no pre-presidential broadcast appearance of his is as memorable as one visit to NBC’s “Meet the Press” ten years ago this week. Biden was asked by anchor David Gregory on May 4, 2012, whether he had rethought his longstanding opposition to same-sex marriage. “I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties,” Biden responded. “Who do you love? And will you be loyal to the person you love? And that’s what people are finding out is what all marriages, at their root, are about, whether they’re marriages of lesbians or gay men or heterosexuals.”
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