Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes –
the man credited with making Obama president – is engaged to his
long-term boyfriend, gay marriage advocate Sean Eldridge, leaving the
president with another gay couple's marriage to “wrestle” with,
the
New York Post's Page Six reported.
Hughes proposed to Eldridge, the
political director of Freedom to Marry, on New Year's Eve.
“We were in Thailand in a hotel room
in the north. We were delayed after two days in the snowstorm and
Chris got down on one knee and proposed. It was very traditional and
very sweet,” Eldridge told the paper.
“We've been together for five years
now,” he added.
Hughes was an early Obama supporter and
has been dubbed “the kid who made Obama president” for organizing
his social networking site, My.BarackObama.com, during the 2008
campaign.
The pair have yet to set a date for
their wedding and say they would like to marry in New York. But
while Governor Andrew Cuomo supports gay marriage, the
odds that the Republican-controlled Senate will act in the near term
are dim.
In
recently saying that he is still “wrestling” with whether gay and
lesbian couples should have the right to marry, Obama noted that
he has many close gay friends in long-term relationships.