The US president claimed {that a} highschool incident opened his thoughts to same-sex marriage, however his voting file proves in any other case
US President Joe Biden claimed this week that seeing two males kiss whereas he was in highschool led him to help homosexual marriage. Nonetheless, Biden was a staunch opponent of same-sex unions till he was in his 60s.
Talking to ‘The Each day Present’ host Kal Penn on Monday, Biden mentioned that he had an “epiphany” on the difficulty when his father dropped him off at highschool throughout his senior yr.
“I [was] about to get out of the automotive and I look to my proper and two well-dressed males in fits kissed one another, leaned in and gave one another a kiss,” he mentioned. “I’ll always remember it. I turned and checked out my dad and he mentioned, ‘Joey, it’s easy. They love one another’.”
“It doesn’t matter whether or not it’s similar intercourse or a heterosexual couple, they need to have the ability to get married,” Biden then declared.
Biden: “I can bear in mind precisely when my epiphany [on supporting gay marriage] was … I used to be a senior in highschool. And my dad was dropping me off and I bear in mind I used to be about to get out of the automotive and I appeared to my proper and two well-dressed males in fits kissed one another.” pic.twitter.com/0aHlUQ7ghJ
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 14, 2023
Biden graduated from the Archmere Academy, a non-public Catholic college in Claymont, Delaware, in 1961. When he entered politics a decade later, he informed a homosexual activist that homosexuals “are safety dangers,” and will due to this fact be barred from army service.
As a senator, Biden went on to vote for a 1994 modification that may strip federal funding from any college district “that teaches acceptance of homosexuality as a life-style,” and the 1996 Protection of Marriage Act, which outlined marriage as “a authorized union between one man and one girl.”
When President George W. Bush sought so as to add this definition to the US Structure in 2006, Biden opposed the measure. He didn’t argue that his views had modified, however that as Congress had already made heterosexual marriage “the regulation of the land,” Bush’s proposal was a waste of time.
“All of us voted on it,” Biden informed NBC Information on the time. “Marriage is between a person and a lady and states should respect that.”
Biden ultimately modified his stance in 2012, when his boss, President Barack Obama, got here out in favor of same-sex marriage. The Supreme Courtroom dominated the Protection of Marriage Act unconstitutional a yr later, and the regulation was totally repealed when Biden signed the Respect for Marriage Act final yr.
All through his political profession, Biden has been identified to manufacture tales of his previous. He falsely claimed to have been arrested en path to assembly Nelson Mandela in jail in Apartheid-era South Africa, and that he was arrested whereas protesting for civil rights within the Sixties. He has informed a number of variations of his “epiphany” story earlier than too, claiming in 2014 that he performed the position of the daddy within the story, and recalling a yr later that the supposed incident passed off when his father was driving him to use for jobs in Wilmington, Delaware, as a 17-year-old.
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