Yes­ter­day was his­toric. For the first time, a sit­ting Pres­i­dent pub­licly sup­ported same-​​sex mar­riage. Barack Obama con­tin­ues to make history.

There’s a lot to say about this. But I want our com­menters to say it. I’ll pro­vide some thoughts to get you started, and ask some provoca­tive ques­tions. You get to answer them.

There are impli­ca­tions for soci­ety, for pol­i­tics, and for moral­ity. There are issues of reli­gion, of civil rights, and for elec­toral math. Let’s talk.

In an era in which politi­cians often strug­gle to say the most bland and inof­fen­sive things, the Pres­i­dent came out with a bold and con­tro­ver­sial state­ment. Or did he? Polls for the last decade have been steadily mov­ing in this direc­tion, toward greater accep­tance of same-​​sex mar­riage. Yes, there are those who will dis­ap­prove of the President’s posi­tion. But does he have a major­ity (or at least a plu­ral­ity) behind him? Is it really that con­tro­ver­sial anymore?

Are Amer­i­can politi­cians are becom­ing increas­ingly bland? Newt Gin­grich and Rick San­to­rum were any­thing but restrained in their extrem­ism. But then they lost, and Mitt Rom­ney has been a per­fect pan­der bear in his drive to say what the group he’s with wants to hear. So, was the President’s state­ment brave, or noth­ing unusual?

Inter­est­ingly, this is one topic on which Mitt hasn’t been wishy-​​washy. On the topic of same-​​sex mar­riage, Mitt insists this is one area he will never recon­sider. He’s opposed, com­pletely, unshak­ingly, unquiv­er­ingly. Will that help him or hurt him? Or will he soon start equiv­o­cat­ing despite his pre­vi­ous state­ments of unwa­ver­ing principle?

In the past cou­ple of weeks, there’s been a con­flu­ence of events: a senior Rom­ney oper­a­tive who may have been encour­aged to resign for the crime of RWG (Repub­li­can While Gay). Vice Pres­i­dent Biden expressed sup­port for same-​​sex mar­riage in pub­lic. (Was that a trial bal­loon? Weigh in on the idea.) North Car­olina enacted a doubly-​​unnecessary anti-​​rights amend­ment that will restrict a whole bunch of things — but not gay mar­riage, since that was already ille­gal in North Carolina.

And yes­ter­day, the Pres­i­dent came out. So to speak, anyway…he said same-​​sex cou­ples should have the same rights as mixed-​​gender cou­ples. Is all this coin­ci­dence? Was any of it orches­trated? Put on your tin­foil hat.

Does it make sense to keep putting civil rights up to a pop­u­lar vote? Would blacks have ever obtained equal rights in the United States if we had done that? Would they still be slaves? What do you think?

Is the President’s state­ment going to affect the Novem­ber elec­tions? Will it drive his oppo­nents to the polls, or fire up his sup­port­ers? Will gay Repub­li­cans con­sider whether they pre­fer a Pres­i­dent who sup­ports their rights, even if he dif­fers with them on other issues…or one who wants to deny them? Will Pres­i­dent Obama lose any votes, or any states, that he would oth­er­wise have won? Will the sup­port of gay-​​rights groups push him over the top in any states? Will gay rights groups think of this as too lit­tle, too late?

What are the moral impli­ca­tions? Did the moral­ity of the nation suf­fer when women were given the vote, or when it became legal every­where for a black man to marry a white woman? Are these analo­gies appro­pri­ate, or are the rights of homo­sex­u­als some­how dif­fer­ent altogether?

Does this infringe on anyone’s reli­gious rights? No one has rec­om­mended that churches who are opposed to same-​​sex mar­riage should be forced to per­form them. But is it pos­si­ble that the law could move in that direc­tion? Would we need a dif­fer­ent Supreme Court before such a ques­tion even needs to be asked?

Or is all of this too much noise over noth­ing? Does the opin­ion of the Pres­i­dent on this really make much dif­fer­ence? Does any­one think the Pres­i­dent will actively cam­paign on this issue, will make it into a major election-​​year issue, or will con­struct major pol­icy on this point? Does this presage a second-​​term drive to repeal DOMA?

Will the Repub­li­can oppo­si­tion make this into a major election-​​year issue? If they do, will this ener­gize 18-​​to-​​35-​​year-​​olds to vote against them? Will Repub­li­can voter ID laws make it more dif­fi­cult for those 18-​​to-​​35-​​year-​​olds to vote any­way? What will the Inde­pen­dents think? Is any­one enough of a single-​​issue voter for this to matter?

What about the media? Accep­tance of same-​​sex rela­tion­ships has been a ris­ing theme on TV and in the movies. Is the media in the tank for gays? What will this mean for all that Cit­i­zens United money that’s going to be spent try­ing to make peo­ple very afraid of same-​​sex marriage?

And why should any­one be afraid of same-​​sex mar­riage? Are mixed-​​gender mar­riages so weak that happy same-​​sex cou­ples will be a threat to some­one else’s hap­pi­ness? Is that irrel­e­vant — is same-​​sex mar­riage just morally wrong?

At moments when a his­toric even occurs, there always are more ques­tions than answers. What ques­tions have I missed?

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