Here are the three biggest hand-wringing fears/misnomers people have had about gay marriage, even those who support it:

1. This unimportant issue will cost Obama re-election!

2. Marriage equality would have happened by now, if not for those on-the-down low, religious, self-hating, homophobic black folks!

3. Marriage equality will never pass when it comes up for a vote, because it never has before, and therefore never will, especially in a state with a lot black voters!

Ever since President Obama came out for same-sex marriage, all three have been proven to be utter bullshit. Let's explore.

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Steven Thrasher

Mike Signorile on the air yesterday

We're approaching, if not looking in the rearview mirror at, a watershed moment in American civil rights history. A majority of the American public now supports marriage equality for same-sex couples.

And, despite what detractors have been saying and predicting, this includes black people, too. An increasingly wide array of black political, cultural, and even military leaders -- Barack Obama, General Colin Powell, Congressman John Lewis, Mayor Cory Booker, Governor Deval Patrick, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, Congressman John Conyers, Rev. Al Shaprton, Mayor Michael Nutter, Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Emanuel Cleaver, and entertainers Will Smith, Jay-Z and 50 Cent, to name a few -- have come out for marriage equality.

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Pete Souza/The White House

Think this guy coming out for marriage equality had anything to do with it?

Maybe they should have called Barack Obama the homosexual "Black Abe Lincoln."

Buried in the polls showing that Obama's same-sex marriage support has had no effect on his own re-election prospects (debunking the myth that his gay support would hurt him) and that it seems to have moved "strong support" for marriage equality positively is this gem: a majority of African Americans now support marriage equality, according to a just published poll for ABC News.

This is pretty big news, considering lower support for gay rights by black people than by white people has been (mistakenly and disproportionately) blamed for passing Prop 8 in California, used (unsuccessfully) as a wedge to try to stop the Marriage Equality Act from passing here in New York by Rev. Sen. Ruben Diaz, and touted by cultural critic Touré as a black voter death knell right after the President's coming out just two weeks ago. Like Touré, even the National Organization for Marriage believed the divide was so great between these two groups that their key to victory would be to "drive a wedge between gays and blacks."

To get to the bottom of this, the Voice spoke with the man behind the poll, Gary Langer, the President of Langer Research Associates and pollster for ABC News.

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WNYC reported yesterday that five "avatars" are going to be taking up customer service duty at Port Authority airports.

The above video is a demonstration of what one of these projected robots will do. They will not be interactive, nor holographic like Tupac, but rather be a kind of 2D video displayed on a life-sized cutout.

What "she" says is pretty scary.

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Pete Souza/The White House

It's fair to call it the Obama Effect: leaders in the black community, old and young, political and cultural, are coming out of the closet to back same-sex marriage. And they are a motley crew, from the legacy NAACP, to the rapper 50 Cent, who just a couple years ago suggested that if you're a man "and you don't eat pu**y just kill yourself damn it. The world will be a better place." (He'd also once tweeted, "Perez Hilton calld me douchebag [sic] so I had my homie shoot up a gay wedding. wasnt his but still made me feel better.")

And now 50 tacitly supports gays getting married.

The Obama Effect.

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TMZ is reporting that disco legend Donna Summer has danced her last dance, having lost a battle with cancer. She was 63.

We just happened to be listening to "Last Dance," Summer's 1978 hit, when we read the news on Twitter.

We already knew it was going to be quite a Pride celebration this June for New York's gay community, given the one year anniversary of the Marriage Equality Act and President Obama's recent endorsement of same-sex marriage. With the passing of one of Pride's most revered divas, it's going to be all the more bittersweet as people sing, "I need you, by me, beside me, to guide me/To hold, to scold me, 'cause when I'm bad, I'm so bad."

Thanks for that last chance for romance tonight, Donna. Dance in peace, in that big, disco hall in the sky.

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From the Department of Karma and Fortuitous Timing:

President Obama will be speaking at Barnard's graduation today, but the women's college will also be honoring Evan Wolfson.

Wolfson, who will be receiving Barnard's Medal of Distinction, is the founder and president of "Freedom to Marry" and is often called "The Godfather of Gay Marriage."

Wolfson was indeed booked for this gig for some time, long before President Obama's historic announcement last Wednesday that he and Wolfson are, indeed, pretty much on the same page.

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There are many culprits who helped push Obama out of the same-sex marriage support closet this week, with Malia and Sasha (who didn't see the difference between their friends' parents who are opposite or same sex), Joe Biden's loose, grandiose, hyperbolic lips, and the (later confirmed) prospect of raking in big donations at the top of the list.

Another culprit deserves due credit: the press. After Biden came out on Sunday in support of same-sex couples, followed by Education Secretary Arne Duncan the following day, the White House Press Corps merciless pounded Jay Carney to clarify just what the hell President Obama's position actually was. Carney knew he wouldn't be able to talk about anything else until he had an answer for the hungry pack animals that had smelled blood.

One reporter deserves special recognition here, our friend Chris Geidner of Metro Weekly. It was Geidner, after all, who got the first interview with a member of Obama's cabinet who supported same-sex marriage when he interviewed H.U.D. Secretary Shuan Donovan last November. It was his challenge to Carney this week that led to the press secretary's visible stumble (a moment The Daily Show and others took interest in). We chatted with Geidner about the scene in the White House Briefing Room this week, why he thinks Obama's stance is not a "half-loaf" measure , and about his cover story on where the LGBT movement is going, "How It Ends."

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Steven Thrasher

Brian Lehrer on the air

After publishing our piece yesterday "5 Reasons Why Touré Is Wrong On Blacks, Gay Marriage and Obama," we had the chance to talk about the president's new support for marriage equality with WNYC's Brian Lehrer.

We took calls from black listeners and talked to Lehrer about the many reasons why we believe black angst over gay rights is overplayed and how we strongly believe there will be no major fall out for Obama with black voters. Take a listen.

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What a gay week! The President came out for gay marriage, while his opponent, Mitt Romney, had another kind of coming out.

In timing that couldn't have been more poetic or suspicious, depending on your take, the Washington Post published a must-read, 5,500 word story on Mitt Romney's days at Hogwarts the Cranbrook School, in which Romney allegedly bullied a gay classmate. (Writing stories of about that length ourselves, we're sympathetic to the Post story's author, Jason Horowitz, and know he couldn't have predicted in the weeks or months of research what other news would be happening when it was finally published.) Romney has apologized for the incident, although he says he doesn't recall pinning John Lauber, his gay classmate, down while he screamed and Romney allegedly hacked off his hair with scissors. (Romney also says, "I certainly don't believe that I thought the fellow was homosexual.")

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