Did Obama trigger a rise in black support for gay marriage?

Polls suggest that instead of turning on President Obama, many African Americans are following his lead, and abandoning their opposition to same-sex marriage

President Obama speaking at the Human Rights Campaign dinner: African Americans appear to be sticking by the president since he announced his support of gay marriage.
(Image credit: Kristoffer Tripplaar/Pool/Corbis)

Before President Obama endorsed gay marriage, Maryland voters narrowly supported upholding their state's law legalizing same-sex marriage. Now they overwhelmingly plan to vote for it in the fall, and the shift is almost entirely due to a sharp increase in support for gay marriage among black Marylanders. Previously, 56 percent of them planned to vote against the new law; now 57 percent plan to vote for it. Polls elsewhere suggest this reflects a national trend — there has been a 19-point shift in black support for same-sex marriage in Pennsylvania, a swing state, since Obama announced his "evolution" on the matter. Black voters, especially regular churchgoers, have traditionally been overwhelmingly opposed to gay marriage. Has Obama turned the tables?

Obama really has changed public opinion: The shifting polls in Maryland demonstrate that "the magnitude of what Obama has done is getting more and more tangible," says Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Beast. By going "from JFK to LBJ on civil rights in three years," he has bridged "the divide between gays and African-Americans" in a way that will help both communities. "This kind of defusing of polarization is what many of us hoped for in Obama," and he really delivered this time.

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