Inaugural poet Richard Blanco has
praised Obama for including gay rights in his inaugural address on
Monday.
In an appearance on CNN's Starting
Point, Blanco said he thought “it was great the way that he
couched gay America in terms of a civil rights sort of issue as
well.”
Blanco, the son of Cuban exiles, wrote
an original poem for the inaugural. At 44, he is the youngest, first
Hispanic and first gay inaugural poet.
“I've often wondered – it seems to
me sometimes that it's the only thing in America still that, you
know, I see the sort of slight slurs on TV or commercials, and I'm
thinking: 'If somebody were to say this about a Mexican-American or a
Latino-American in general or an African-American, you could never
get away with that,'” he said. “And I think the idea it's sort
of this – it is in many ways a civil rights issue. I thought that
was couched nicely to pair all those things together and so
eloquently as he did.”
Blanco also lauded Obama for
referencing the Stonewall riots in his speech.
Obama cited Stonewall, the birthplace
of the gay rights movement, and stated that “if we are truly
created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be
equal as well.”
(Watch
the segment at CNN.)