Joe Biden recalls first time he saw two men kiss
By Will Stroude
US Vice President Joe Biden has recounted the first time he saw two men kissing.
Speaking at a Freedom to Marry rally celebrating the recent introduction of marriage equality across the US last Thursday (July 9), the 72-year-old recalled the moment he and his father spotted the couple while driving through his home state of North Carolina in the late 1950s, NewNowNext reports.
“As we were stopped at the light, two men on the right — very well-dressed men, obviously, business people working for either Hercules or DuPont turned and embraced one another and kissed each other,” he told the crowd of 1,000. “And they went their separate ways.”
He continued: “I’ll never forget. I turned and looked at my dad, just looked at him. And I’ll never forget what he said. He said, ‘Joey, they love each other. It’s simple. They love each other. It’s simple.’
“That’s what this has been all about from the beginning.”
Later in his speech Biden went on to mention the memorable kiss between US football star Abby Wambach and her wife Sarah, which was broadcast around the world after the US women’s football team’s World Cup victory in Canada earlier this month.
“With a flag in hand and her arm around her wife, giving her a kiss, that is really something,” Biden said. “It was just as normal as countless other times you’ve seen that happen.”
He added that despite the recent Supreme Court ruling, the United States still had some way to go to achieve equality for LGBT people.
“Although the freedom to marry, and for that marriage to be recognized in all 50 states [is] the law of the land, there are still 32 states where marriage can be recognized in the morning and you can be fired in the afternoon,” he said.
“This next door is going to be a hell of a lot easier to push open as long as we expose to average Americans the injustice that continues to exist.”
More stories:
Are we all too hung up on ‘tops’ and ‘bottoms’?
Watch: What happens when two men hold hands in Russia?