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1 year later: A look back at Obama’s support for marriage

Observers say announcement helped lead to success at the ballot

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Barack Obama, White House, Democratic Party, gay news, Washington Blade
Barack Obama, White House, Democratic Party, gay news, Washington Blade, Robin Roberts

President Obama comes out for marriage equality in an ABC News interview (Official White House photo by Pete Souza)

Amid cheers over recent marriage equality victories in Rhode Island and Delaware, supporters of same-sex marriage are marking the one-year anniversary of President Obama coming out for marriage equality, calling it a milestone that helped lead to the successes of the past year.

It was a year ago, on May 9, 2012, when Obama declared in an interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts that he had grown to support same-sex marriage.

“At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that, for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama said.

The decision, Obama said, came as the result of speaking with gay members of the armed forces during the debate on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and realizing they should have equal access to the institution of marriage.

But the president was careful to limit the scope of his support. Obama said he was hesitant to make an announcement in favor of marriage equality because he “didn’t want to nationalize the issue” and maintained that he believes the marriage issue remains one best left to the states.

And the announcement wasn’t spontaneous. The president endorsed same-sex marriage after saying for 19 months he was in a state of evolution on the issue. Obama finally made the announcement just three days after Vice President Joseph Biden said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he’s “absolutely comfortable” with married same-sex couples having the “same exact rights” as others.

Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality was seen as a watershed moment because no sitting U.S. president had ever come out for marriage equality and supporters of same-sex marriage hoped his words would influence others to join the president in completing their evolution on the issue.

Arguably, that happened. In the days after the announcement, a Washington Post-ABC News poll found that a majority of black Americans, 59 percent, had also come to support same-sex marriage — up 18 points after the president’s announcement.

Dan Pinello, who’s gay and a political scientist at the City University of New York, identified this growth in support of marriage equality among black Americans as one of the most immediate consequences of Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality.

“Polling data show a statistically significant increase in support for same-sex marriage among black respondents for the periods immediately before and after Obama’s announcement,” Pinello said. “In turn, this increased support probably was crucial in a state with a large African-American-voter contingent like Maryland, which narrowly approved of gay nuptials last November.”

The growth in support isn’t limited to black Americans. Another widely noticed poll in March from Washington Post-ABC News found that 58 percent of the American public had come to support same-sex marriage.

And in the wake of the president’s announcement, substantive changes were seen in favor of marriage equality throughout the country. For the first time ever, the Democratic Party platform in 2012 endorsed marriage equality. In another first, voters legalized same-sex marriage in Maine, Maryland and Washington State at the ballot in November, while voters in Minnesota rejected a state constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. In the past week, Rhode Island and Delaware became the latest to join other states in legalizing marriage equality.

Moreover, a bevy of U.S. senators have followed in Obama’s tracks by coming out for same-sex marriage. The ones who have come out since the beginning of this year include Sens. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo,), Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Kay Hagan (D-N.C.) as well as Republicans Rob Portman (Ohio) and Mark Kirk (Ill.). Now all but three members of the Democratic caucus — Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Mark Pryor (D-Ark.) — back marriage equality.

Pinello said Obama articulating his views a year ago in favor of marriage equality helped set the tone for the Democratic Party that has enabled other lawmakers to come out for same-sex marriage.

“The president set a standard for the Democratic Party, encouraging its other officeholders to emulate his leadership on the issue,” Pinello said. “For example, I doubt that there would be nearly unanimous support for marriage equality among Democrats in the U.S. Senate today without Obama’s action a year ago.”

On Wednesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney reflected on the president’s current views on marriage equality when asked by Sirius XM Radio’s Jared Rizzi if Obama still thinks that state-by-state is the best way to address the issue in the wake of Delaware becoming the 11th state with same-sex marriage on the books.

“There has been enormous progress made,” Carney said. “I think that the facts, as you just recited them, demonstrate the progress made. The president’s views are known. He’s expressed them. Our views on issues like DOMA and Prop 8 have been expressed in legal filings, so I’ll point you to those. For him, it’s a fundamental issue of equal rights, and that’s why he has taken the position that he has taken. But for our legal approach to these issues, I would refer you to the Department of Justice.”

But Obama hit another milestone on Election Day six months after his announcement by winning re-election to the White House despite predictions that coming out for marriage equality would jeopardize his re-election prospects. Although he didn’t win as he did in 2008 North Carolina, a state with a significant evangelical population, Obama walloped Mitt Romney in the electoral college by taking 332 votes in the Electoral College compared to Romney’s 206.

Fred Sainz, vice president of communications for the Human Rights Campaign, said Obama’s victory after coming out for marriage equality is having a major impact as LGBT advocates push more states to legalize same-sex marriage.

“The president proved that elected officials — at the highest of levels — could be for marriage, campaign on it and be reelected, in fact, based on their support,” Sainz said. “Without that shining example, we may not have the number of senators we do today or have been able to recruit the legislators we need to support marriage in Rhode Island and Delaware and soon in Minnesota and Illinois.”

Obama’s support for marriage equality hasn’t been limited to his words in that May interview. Days before the election, newspapers in Maryland, Maine and Washington State published statements from his campaign urging voters in those states to legalize marriage equality at the ballot. After Obama endorsed legislation in favor of marriage equality in Illinois, Organizing for Action, the successor organization to the Obama campaign, sent out action alerts to its members in the state calling on them to help pass the marriage equality legislation.

Most notably, Obama raised the bar on his position in favor of same-sex marriage by having his Justice Department file a friend-of-the-court brief in the pending lawsuit before the Supreme Court challenging California’s Proposition 8. That brief argued the ban on same-sex marriage in California was unconstitutional and suggested similar bans in other states were unconstitutional.

Even before Obama endorsed marriage equality, his administration had already stopped defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court in addition to aiding litigation by filing briefs and arguing against the law in oral arguments.

John Aravosis, who’s gay and editor of AMERICAblog, said Obama has done a “pretty good job” in acting on his position in favor of marriage equality, but added he could do more — particularly in advocating for immigration reform that would enable gay Americans to sponsor foreign spouses for residency within the country.

“If we sort of think through the things that we wanted him to do in the last year on marriage, he’s done a lot of them,” Aravosis said. “The only one I can think of [him not doing] is putting his foot down on immigration reform and saying, ‘This shall not pass if you discriminate against gays.’ It’s the only one I can think of off the top of my head where he needs to do a better job in terms of putting his foot down.”

Aravosis added to some degree the onus is on the LGBT community in terms of “coming up with the list of pro-marriage needs to do” because “rabble-rousing” on the legal briefs in the Prop 8 case eventually led the administration to file them.

It remains to be seen what impact the president’s words will have in future battles over marriage equality. Will lawmakers in Minnesota and Illinois heed Obama’s words as they consider whether to become the 12th and 13th states to legalize same-sex marriage? Will the U.S. Supreme Court draw upon President Obama’s words in rulings against the Defense of Marriage Act and Prop 8?

Evan Wolfson, president of Freedom to Marry, said he expects Obama’s words from a year ago to continue to have an impact in anticipation of the Supreme Court decision and future legislative wins.

“The president’s strong support for the freedom to marry adds to the case we are making in the Supreme Court, signaling to the justices that America is ready for the freedom to marry and they can do the right thing knowing that not only will history vindicate them, but the public will embrace a right ruling,” Wolfson said. “And we’ve already seen how the president’s leadership — and resonant explanation of how he changed his mind  — adds to the momentum in state battles, ongoing and to come.”

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Congress

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bill to criminalize gender affirming care advances

Judiciary Committee markup slated for Wednesday morning

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U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.)’s “Protect Children’s Innocence Act,” which would criminalize guideline-directed gender affirming health care for minors, will advance to markup in the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday morning.

Doctors and providers who administer medical treatments for gender dysphoria to patients younger than 18, including hormones and puberty blockers, would be subject to Class 3 felony charges punishable by up to 10 years in prison if the legislation is enacted.

LGBTQ advocates warn conservative lawmakers want to go after families who travel out of state to obtain medical care for their transgender kids that is banned or restricted in the places where they reside, using legislation like Greene’s to expand federal jurisdiction over these decisions. They also point to the medically inaccurate way in which the bill characterizes evidence-based interventions delineated in standards of care for trans and gender diverse youth as “mutilation” or “chemical castration.”

Days into his second term, President Donald Trump signed “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation,” an executive order declaring that the U.S. would not “fund, sponsor, promote, assist, or support the so-called ‘transition’ of a child from one sex to another, and it will rigorously enforce all laws that prohibit or limit” medical treatments and interventions intended for this purpose.

Greene, who has introduced the bill in years past, noted the president’s endorsement of her bill during his address to the joint session of Congress in March when he said “I want Congress to pass a bill permanently banning and criminalizing sex changes on children and forever ending the lie that any child is trapped in the wrong body.”

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Pappas in Senate race focuses on costs, health care, and personal freedoms

Gay NH congressman hopes to succeed retiring US Sen. Jeanne Shaheen

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U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) launches his U.S. Senate campaign with a kick-off event at his family's restaurant in Manchester, N.H., on April 3, 2025 (Photo courtesy of Chris Pappas for Senate)

U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas (D-N.H.) recently sat down with the Washington Blade for an exclusive interview following the official launch of his bid for New Hampshire’s open U.S. Senate seat, which is expected to be among the most closely watched contests of the 2026 midterm election cycle. 

The congressman, who is serving his fourth term as the representative for New Hampshire’s 1st Congressional District, expects next year’s race will be “very high profile” and “challenging.” The New York Times, meanwhile, anticipates “an expensive and dogged affair.” 

Senate elections tend to attract a disproportionate share of attention and resources especially in recent years as control over the chamber has tended to change hands more often and with smaller margins, but Pappas’s race is expected to be a bellwether for Democrats as they work to mount a comeback after last year’s electoral defeat. 

At the same time, Pappas is gearing up for the battle over the Republican led reconciliation spending bill, with Democratic lawmakers exercising what little leverage they may have in the minority to fight against “disastrous cuts to Medicaid” while “finding other ways to protect what’s important to the people that we represent.” 

Lawmakers on Sunday night gave the go-ahead for the GOP’s tax and spending package, but negotiations continue into this week as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) works to appease conservative hardliners and swing district Republicans. 

Granite Staters are “really concerned” about negotiations in Washington over spending, but also with the exigencies created by President Donald Trump over the past 100+ days of his second term, which have cropped up repeatedly during the town hall-style events in New Hampshire that Pappas has headlined over the spring. 

“That’s part of the reason why things are so challenging here in Washington,” the congressman said. “Oftentimes you’re pulled in 10 different directions on any given day based on what this administration is trying to do, based on what Republicans in Congress are trying to do.” 

“We’ve got to figure out how we can shed light on what’s happening, try to confront the damage, and use whatever tools we have to fight back,” he said, while remaining “focused on those things that matter most, whether that’s people losing their health insurance, cuts to programs like Social Security, and people’s access to their benefits.” 

The US Senate election

“I’ve got a strong foundation of support” for the Senate race, Pappas told the Blade, noting “I’ve run four campaigns for the House in half the state of New Hampshire” whose congressional map is cleaved into halves with the congressman’s constituents in the eastern portion of the state while freshman Democratic Congresswoman Maggie Goodlander represents the 2nd District. 

Following the announcement in March that New Hampshire’s senior U.S. senator, Jeanne Shaheen (D), would not be seeking reelection next year, “I spent the first couple weeks,” Pappas said, “talking directly with folks all across New Hampshire to see what was on their minds, and increasingly, I was hearing from people that they wanted me to jump into the race.” 

The sentiment was shared by Shaheen and the rest of the state’s congressional delegation — Goodlander and U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D) — who quickly endorsed Pappas’s bid. Speculation that the state’s popular former governor Chris Sununu, a Republican, might mount a formidable challenge for the seat ended with his announcement last month that he would not enter the race. 

Even if Pappas is on the glidepath for the Senate, which is difficult to handicap so far in advance of November 2026, the election is expected to draw substantial attention and resources. 

According to the Cook Political Report, of the Senate seats that will be up for grabs in the midterms, nine are held by incumbent Democrats and 19 by incumbent Republicans who are expected to easily win reelection, which leaves just five races whose outcomes are less certain and which therefore are likely to earn most of the attention and resources next year: The blue-leaning open seat in New Hampshire, an open seat in Michigan that is currently deemed a toss-up, the seat in Georgia held by incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff, which is also considered a toss-up, and the red-leaning seats held by incumbent GOP U.S. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.

While the maps present long-shot odds of Democrats regaining control of the upper chamber even though Republicans had reclaimed the Senate majority last year by flipping just four seats for a modest margin of 53-47, races like Pappas’s are expected to be testing grounds for the minority party’s major campaigns midway through Trump’s second term. 

New Hampshire has long been a political battleground where elections tend to be close and voters tend to split the ticket. According to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, only three U.S. states are less politically partisan: Michigan, Wisconsin, and Georgia. The determination is based on data collated from the 2020 and 2024 presidential elections, where voters in both of the Granite State’s two congressional districts favored Joe Biden and Kamala Harris over Donald Trump while supporting the Republican gubernatorial nominees, Chris Sununu and Kelly Ayotte. 

Shaheen has “really built a brand that’s based on serving people and delivering for the constituents of New Hampshire,” Pappas said. “So that’s the kind of work that I want to carry on — but recognizing, in this time, that we really have to stand up and fight and be a part of our response to what this administration is doing.”

“We do need to re-establish some basic checks and balances here in Washington, so that there is oversight and accountability of an administration that’s blowing through all the guardrails and is really estranged from public opinion and from the Constitution,” he said, while continuing “to find ways to meet people where they are, to hear their stories, and to connect the fight here in Washington to people’s lives back home.” 

Responding to the needs of Granite Staters

Specifically, while “people are responding to a lot of different stories,” Pappas highlighted concerns about “cuts to specific programs, the fact that we’ve got 80,000 VA employees that are going to be fired,” and over the direction in which care for veterans is headed under the new administration. 

“The big fight right now is around health care,” he said. “It’s around defending Medicaid coverage, ensuring we’re going to continue to have a Medicaid expansion program in New Hampshire, which is something that I’ve worked with then-Gov. Maggie Hassan to implement, and whether we’re going to have tax fairness and prevent huge tax breaks from going to the wealthiest Americans and the biggest corporations.”

Asked about cuts to medical research that are impacting research universities across the country, Pappas said the issue has been raised often in discussions with people in his home state.

“The University of New Hampshire does a tremendous amount of research with federal funds,” he noted, “and that’s something that we’ve worked hard through the years to advocate for, and it’s really important for the university to continue to be able to do that work and help us understand the world around us, how it’s changing, and how we can respond to protect public health, for instance, to protect our communities against sea level rise — those are just important priorities.” 

Unlocking “breakthroughs in science and medicine” is important for America’s global competitiveness, the congressman added, whether by “homegrown talent here in the United States or research scientists from around the world that want to come to our country and share their expertise and help the United States move forward.”

“Donald Trump has decided that universities and colleges are a political enemy of his, and he’s trying to punish them, but in doing that, he’s really short changing our economy and the future of the United States,” Pappas said, adding, “most people recognize that, especially people in New Hampshire.” 

The congressman recounted how he was able to work closely with his colleagues in the state’s congressional delegation to leverage public pressure and influence by labor unions to reinstate probationary employees at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard who were let go following drastic cuts to the federal workforce under the Trump-Vance administration. 

“It’s really critical to the future of that facility, which rehabilitates our nuclear submarine fleet and has nearly 7,000 civilian employees,” Pappas said. “So that was one case where we found that we were able to get a lot of local attention and support around an issue, and perhaps that news made it all the way back here to the Defense Department who were concerned about public pressure.”

“We’ve got a lot of long-time employees at that shipyard,” along with “a lot of new people that have been brought on board as a result of an expansion over the last several years,” the congressman noted. “Across the board, people want to know that we’re focused, especially on our families’ bottom line right now,” which is why it was important for him and his colleagues to “go to bat for a facility that’s really important to people’s livelihoods, but also to our overall economy” and for national security. 

Moving forward, Pappas said, they will continue pushing back against “efforts to attack the right to organize and collective bargaining,” because “unions at the shipyard have a great relationship with management, but that could be disrupted by political efforts from this administration to attack labor unions.” 

The economy and protecting personal freedoms

The congressman said that while “we need to try a little bit of everything to try to identify what is going to break through,” at the same time, “I do have the sense that the last election hinged on the economy, that every election really hinges on the economy, and those are the issues that are going to be, I think, most salient to folks next year.” 

“We’ve got to make sure that we’re making progress at addressing inequities in the economy and are lowering costs,” he said. “Right now, the top issues that I hear about in New Hampshire include the high cost of housing, the lack of affordability of child care, the fact that our health care system is still inaccessible, and far too expensive for most people to be able to get the care that they need.” 

“We’re not getting any of that from Republicans right now,” Pappas said, when it comes to the “work we have to do to level the playing field in our economy,” adding, “they talked a big game in the last campaign about lowering costs, but they’re taking no meaningful action to do it, and so we need to be thoughtful about a really forward-thinking agenda that can focus on how we allow people to get ahead and stand in this economy.” 

Asked about whether and to what extent Pappas will focus his messaging on the president’s tariffs, he noted “people are already responding,” especially in “a state like New Hampshire that has a longstanding close relationship with Canada.”

He continued, “88 percent of our small businesses import something. We have a lot of exporting businesses that rely on their markets overseas, including in places like Canada and China, and some of those markets are going away because of the tariffs that have been slapped on U.S. goods that we export.” 

Trump’s trade war “has generated so much instability in our economy, it’s really hard for our small businesses to navigate,” Pappas said, with these new “disruptions to supply chains and the threat of increased costs” following a “really tough 5-year period from inflation and workforce shortages to the pandemic that predated that.” 

“This is an issue that I think brings people together across party lines,” Pappas said. “Folks understand that we have trade agreements in place that have been negotiated [and] supported on a bipartisan basis, including” the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, “which was renegotiated during the first Trump administration.” 

The congressman continued, “it only makes sense to move forward in a way where we are focused on how we can make more things in the United States, but also recognize that we can’t make everything and we can’t go it alone, so we need to be working with close partners like Canada, and there’s no there’s no reason for this sort of trade war that only hurts our businesses and our ability to create jobs and have a thriving economy.”

“I also think, with respect to personal freedoms, in the wake of the Dobbs decision, we have to continue to take steps to re-establish Roe v. Wade as the law of the land and defend reproductive freedom,” Pappas said. 

“I’m the only candidate in this race right now, and I think regardless of who the Republican is, we’re going to be fighting for the Women’s Health Protection Act and to make sure that we’re re-establishing the precedent that Roe set for more than half a century, which is broadly supported in New Hampshire,” he said. 

LGBTQ issues

A co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, Pappas is the first openly gay member of Congress to represent New Hampshire. If elected, he would be the third out LGBTQ U.S. senator behind U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.) and Laphonza Butler, who served from 2023 to 2024.  

Trump, along with his Republican allies in Congress and appointees serving in his second administration, has undermined rights and protections for LGBTQ people on a variety of fronts, including by dismantling and defunding efforts to fight against HIV. Cuts to basic and clinical science research along with public health programs have been advanced by the president’s budget and the GOP lawmakers’ reconciliation package, as well as through the reorganization of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

Now in the minority, House Democrats “will not be in the room negotiating, as much as we would love to tell the majority exactly how we feel about all these items,” Pappas conceded. At the same time, “to get a budget put in place and appropriations bills passed, you’ll need 60 votes in the Senate, which means you need some sort of bipartisan consensus, at least in that body,” which “could potentially be a difference maker in defending some of these programs that folks care about, that the president has sought to eliminate.”

“Services for people with HIV, access to health care, vital research — those are things that Americans broadly support,” the congressman said. “We’re going to stand up against it, and where there’s harm to people and important priorities, I’ll certainly be speaking out, and I know that members of the Equality Caucus will be taking that very seriously.” 

“Many people in this administration,” Pappas said, “are not traditional Republicans and don’t support the same set of policies that we’ve seen even Republican presidents put in place,” like the PEPFAR initiative led by George W. Bush, “which has changed the trajectory of the treatment of HIV and AIDS around the world.” 

“Now, they are attacking that program and its ability to provide care for people in some of the most vulnerable regions of the world, and it’s been reported that individuals in Africa have died as a result of not getting the treatments that they were counting on through that program,” the congressman noted. 

He continued, “We really have a human responsibility to do whatever we can to meet the needs of people who are susceptible to disease or who have been exposed to it, and the fact that this administration is breaking with that long bipartisan tradition of research, of humanitarianism, I think is incredibly cruel, and it’s not what the United States should stand for.” 

What has been especially frustrating, Pappas said, is the silence from Republicans in Congress including those who “have championed these programs for decades.” 

“I don’t know what to say to that,” he said, except that “people need to be paying attention and we need to do everything possible to speak out and fight back against it” because “we can’t see an interruption in terms of the progress that’s been made in fighting disease and developing new therapies.” 

Public health aside, when asked about how the Democratic Party should approach messaging on issues of transgender rights and gender identity, Pappas stressed that “Americans largely embrace equality” and people want others “to have the same rights and responsibilities.” 

The congressman raised the Equality Act as an example — a bill that would protect Americans against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity in areas from housing to employment, which was reintroduced last month with a press conference headlined by Pappas and top Democrats from both chambers of Congress. 

Democrats should not shy away from advancing bills that advance “fairness and equality before the law,” he said, “especially at a time where we know that the LGBTQ community is being targeted by really cynical political attacks.”

“Where I come from, in New Hampshire, we’ve adopted protections for trans individuals in our state’s non discrimination statutes,” Pappas noted, “and so I think when you come from an environment like New Hampshire, you understand that people do respect their neighbors for their differences.” 

He continued, “We’re a live and let live state, and so I think it’s really consistent with who we are to be tolerant and embrace people of different identities and orientations. That’s who we are as Granite Staters. And I think people recognize that in order to have a future where everyone can live a full and productive life, you need to provide people with equality before the law.”

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Joe Biden diagnosed with ‘aggressive form’ of prostate cancer

The former president and his family are reviewing treatment options, according to a statement

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President Joe Biden (Washington Blade photo by Michael Key)

According to a statement from his personal office on Sunday, former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.

“Last week, President Joe Biden was seen for a new finding of a prostate nodule after experiencing increasing urinary symptoms. On Friday, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, characterized by a Gleason score of 9 (Grade Group 5) with metastasis to the bone,” the statement said.

Biden and his family “are reviewing treatment options with his physicians,” the statement said. “While this represents a more aggressive form of the disease, the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management.”

“Cancer touches us all,” the former president posted on X Monday. “Like so many of you, Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places. Thank you for lifting us up with love and support.”

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