I imagine most gays who will be voting for him after this would have voted for him anyway, so it will be hard to tell. But yeah, I think you're right. Right now opinion polls show something like 50% in favor of gay marriage and 48% against, but obviously the strong antis outnumber the strong pros right now. Once that changes, you'll see politicians (minus the few true believer Santorum types) falling all over themselves to say how many gay parents their children's friends have and how they were for it all along. Profiles in courage, all of them.

I imagine most gays who will be voting for him after this would have voted for him anyway, so it will be hard to tell. But yeah, I think you're right. Right now opinion polls show something like 50% in favor of gay marriage and 48% against, but obviously the strong antis outnumber the strong pros right now. Once that changes, you'll see politicians (minus the few true believer Santorum types) falling all over themselves to say how many gay parents their children's friends have and how they were for it all along. Profiles in courage, all of them.

I think most liberals assumed Obama was pro gay marriage, anyway. They have a habit of assuming Obama agrees with them, when everything he does says otherwise.

Didn't you know, Obama hates war?

Yes, I think you are right there, the Democrats do come across as more concerned with gay rights, and so have the support of those people. But I also think that there must a significant amount of floating-voters/weak-Republicans who are either gay or have friends and family who are gay. Now that Obama has clarified his stance he may of just won a bunch of votes from these people.

Maybe so, but I doubt it. He basically said that he wasn't going to do anything about it and hasn't changed from his previous position that gay marriage isn't a civil right, at least not unless he believes that violating one's civil rights should be up to the states. The GOProud response was a good and snarky one: they congratulated Obama on progressing to the Dick Cheney stance on gay marriage.

All this does, really, is end the ridiculous charade of, "What? PRESIDENT OBAMA'S STANCE ON GAY MARRIAGE is evolving!" And it gives gay Democrats the excuse to give him the money they really wanted to give him to begin with but were just the tiniest bit too peeved to write out the check. This just isn't the kind of issue an election hinges on, especially not in this year and especially with Obama taking such a non-radical position of leaving it up to the states. Once the novelty of this thing blows over, those gays who aren't such a cheap date will wake up and realize that nothing has changed and that more than half of the states will still have laws banning gay marriage and will still have President Obama's expressed approval.

It's funny too... if only because i'd say gay marriage is very much the epitomy of something that is federal jurisdiction.

Mostly because marriage has MANY federal rights.

Maybe you could argue that states can decide whether or not to recognize gay marriages as  far as individual state benefits go... but due to the federal measures, "Federal Marriage" is COMPLETELY a federal issue.