Former Secretary of State Colin Powell became the latest public official to back gay marriage on Wednesday.

“I have no problem with it,” he said on CNN, “and it was the Congress that imposed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, though it was certainly my position and my recommendation to get us out of an even worse outcome that could have occurred, as you’ll recall.”

Who are the Millennials? Aside from being born in the 1980s and 1990s, they comprise a generation that continues to elude a neat definition. With the popularity of HBO’s Girls, whose main character thinks she’s the voice of this new generation (“Or at least a voice. Of a generation.”), Millennials have come under renewed focus in the media, among the literati, and in the boardrooms of marketers trying to pinpoint what this demographic wants. Here, eight ways that Millennials have been described: 

[H]onestly, the “first gay president” label just doesn’t work, no matter what rhetorical device you employ. And it makes us gays seem silly and starved for validation.

The same CBS/New York Times poll that shows Mitt Romney opening up a very slight lead on the president also contains a possible clue to solving the mystery I mentioned last week: The gap between public support for gay marriage in opinion polling and the actual support the cause tends to get at the ballot box.

The campaign for the American presidency is serving to remind us of how much the world has changed in the half-century or so since we entered the 1960’s. An African-American President tells a part of the story of the civil rights struggle that many associate with the 1960’s. Vice President Biden and President Obama’s policy pronouncements on gay marriage last week focus attention on another key struggle for respect and equal rights. The reaction against Mitt Romney’s high school bullying is also part of a story about the changing role of verbal and physical violence and its prevalence in our culture.

But for all the polls showing movement toward greater public acceptance of gay marriage, for all the signs of increased tolerance and changing mores, there’s one undeniable fact: A full embrace of gay rights has never been a winner in the political arena
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Fifteen years of ballot measures in more than 30 states from coast-to-coast show an issue that has been rejected nearly every time it’s gone before the voters — often by large margins.

Here are seven states where Obama just bought himself headaches with his historic decision to back gay marriage:

Why do you support discrimination against a group of Americans? This is just one of the questions that I ask myself when I encounter people opposed to gay marriage. Other questions that pop into my head include: What makes Americans who are gay less American than you? Why are they not entitled to the same protections under our system of laws that you are?

The issue of marriage equality to me is not a nuanced legal issue. It’s not a moral issue. It’s simply a question of: Do you think all Americans should be treated equally?