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Obama's Inaugural Speech Mentions Gays, Long Voting Lines

If you found yourself saying, "Hey! He's talking about me!" during Barack Obama's inaugural speech, it's because you either waited in line to vote for many hours or you're gay or both!

During the speech for his second inauguration, Obama made references to two items that are of great importance to many a Floridian.

Namely, he said that long voting lines are totally a bummer and that gay people deserve the right to be married like everybody else.

In fact, it was the first time any president has ever used the word gay during an inaugural speech.

As the inauguration fell on MLK Day, Obama used the symbol of civil rights to drive home his message that this generation must carry on the work of previous civil rights icons to make sure future generations don't have to wait in line for nine hours to vote.

"Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote," the president said.

Thanks mainly to our Dark Lord Governor not only reducing early voting days but refusing to extend it even as more and more South Floridians waited hours and hours to vote, Florida once again became the ass-end of every voting joke across America.

Obama finally won Florida, but it was only because people actually waited in long lines and then died off as their grandchildren eventually got to the machines and voted in their place.

Likewise, Obama used the Declaration of Independence as a stepping stone to proclaim that everyone should be included in the whole "all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights" thing.

Obama said that the forefathers' promise wouldn't be complete "until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law."

"For if we are truly created equal," he continued, "then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well."

Obama also referenced women's suffrage and Selma as examples of the struggles of getting equality as he spoke about the Stonewall Riots -- the 1969 riots by the gay community against police in Greenwich Village, a moment regarded as the turning point for the gay rights movement.

"We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths -- that all of us are created equal -- is the star that guides us still, just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall."

"Progress," said the prez, "does not compel us to settle centuries-long debates about the role of government for all time, but it does require us to act in our time."

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Chris Joseph
Contact: Chris Joseph

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