Barack Obama credits his daughters for helping him come around on marriage equality

Barack Obama has said his two teenage daughters were instrumental in encouraging him to support marriage equality.

Speaking in London on his ‘farewell tour’ as he prepares for his final few months in office, the US president spoke to young people in a town hall style meeting and praised the marriage equality movement as, “the fastest set of changes in terms of a social movement that I’ve seen.”

He went on to discuss his own journey on the issue, which saw him initially supporting only civil unions. It was only in 2012 that the President came out in favour of marriage for same sex couples, supposedly with the encouragement of his Vice President Joe Biden, who is coincidentally a devout Catholic.

Obama also had praise for his daughters Malia (17) and Sasha (14), saying: “I have to confess my children generally had an impact on me.”

He continued: “People I loved who were in monogamous same-sex relationships explained to me what I should have understood earlier, which is it was not simply about legal rights but about a sense of stigma, that if you’re calling it something different it means that somehow it means less in the eyes of society.”

OBAMA CAMERON

Speaking at a press conference with Prime Minister David Cameron, President Obama also said he thought that discriminatory LGBT laws in Mississippi and North Carolina should be overturned.

He concluded that they were passed, “in response to politics in part and some strong emotions that are generated by people.”

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