March 27, 2020
Watch: Joe Biden Equates Same-Sex Parenting with 'Mommy and Daddy'
Robert Nesti READ TIME: 4 MIN.
Joe Biden has a way of saying the right things while appearing clueless. That was evident during his "Happy Hour" livestream on Wednesday night when he described same-sex parents as "mommy and dad."
Wearing a gingham shirt with an American flag badge on his lapel, Biden addressed a question from the Alabama Young Democrats Josh Coleman, the LGBTQ liaison in Birmingham, reports Coleman asked the former vice president why it was important for him on May 5, 2012 to
Biden answered by telling an anecdote about when he saw two men having a PDA on a street in Wilmington, Del. when he was a teenager. He said his father told him: "Joey, It's simple. They love each other. It's simple, Joey they love each other."
He went on to describe the event that precipitated his public endorsement of marriage equality a week later.
"What happened was I showed up at an event, during an event when I was the Vice President and it was in a home of a gay couple. I walked in the kitchen and met them first and they had two beautiful children – a little boy and a little girl – the way they loved their mommy and dad – two men who were, in fact, really strong men and strong people, it just impressed me so much," Biden said.
He went on to explain how President Obama embraced him when he went into the White House the next morning.
"Everyone said, 'Biden was in going to be in real trouble getting ahead of everybody on this...'When I walked in the Oval Office as I did every morning and he got up from behind the desk and gave me a big hug and said, 'Well, you said you weren't going to quiet and you were right.'"
But Jo Becker's book about the evolution of LGBTQ marriage, "Forcing the Spring" painted a different picture,