The RP: Yep, I’m for Gay Marriage

Today, I’m thrilled to announce that I have joined the contributing team of writers at one of the most popular and prominent Web sites in the country — The Huffington Post.

I will write regularly on national issues for their site and cross-post those pieces here at The Recovering Politician.

My first piece is a big one:  I’m coming out of the closet to support gay marriage.  As you will read, it is a very important personal moment for me, but also a challenge to others to make the same admission, or to consider changing their mind on the issue.

I conclude by urging the nation’s most prominent fence-sitter to join me publicly on the side of marriage equality.

Here is an excerpt from my essay:

Yep, I’m for gay marriage.

I’ve lived a lie for most of my adult life. As a statewide elected official in Kentucky — an inner notch of the Bible Belt — I understood that coming out of the closet for gay marriage was tantamount to political suicide: an overwhelming majority of my constituents opposed it.

But now as a recovering politician, I feel both liberated and morally compelled to holler from the cyber-rooftops: I’m proud as hell, and I’m not going to fake it any more!

Growing up in Kentucky, gay marriage was never a topic of discussion.

But late nights of philosophical experimentation in college helped me discover that I’d been for marriage equality all my life. With a father who’d marched with Martin Luther King, Jr., and a mother who’d been a statewide force for women’s rights, the notion that we were all created equal was absurdly obvious. As a Jew growing up in the South, I knew what it was like to feel discriminated, to be other. And that same faith taught me to “love your neighbor as yourself” and to “judge not, lest you be judged,” making marriage equality a natural extension of my core beliefs.

Click here to read the rest of “Yep, I’m for Gay Marriage.”

Of course, as always, I would like to hear your comments, particularly if you disagree with my position and/or you wish to critique the timing or substance of my admission.

Please use the comments section below to share your opinions and stories.