Dodd: I Now Support Gay Marriage While I've long been for extending every benefit of marriage to same-sex couples, I have in the past drawn a distinction between a marriage-like status ("civil unions") and full marriage rights.
The reason was simple: I was raised to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman. And as many other Americans have realized as they've struggled to reconcile the principle of fairness with the lessons they learned early in life, that's not an easy thing to overcome.
But the fact that I was raised a certain way just isn't a good enough reason to stand in the way of fairness anymore.
The Connecticut Supreme Court, of course, has ruled that such a distinction holds no merit under the law. And the Court is right.
I believe that effective leaders must be able and willing to grow and change over their service. I certainly have during mine -- and so has the world. Thirty-five years ago, who could have imagined that we'd have an African-American President of the United States?
My young daughters are growing up in a different reality than I did. Our family knows many same-sex couples -- our neighbors in Connecticut, members of my staff, parents of their schoolmates. Some are now married because the Connecticut Supreme Court and our state legislature have made same-sex marriage legal in our state.
