President Obama is apparently tired of pretending he opposes “gay marriage.” Good.

Good, because lying to the American people is always wrong and because now the American people will have a clear choice: a president who supports same-sex “marriage” or a president who sides with the majority of the American people, including 61% of North Carolinians.

Obama has done for Mitt Romney what Romney might have had trouble doing for himself:  consolidating his support among religious conservative voters.

The North Carolina vote was a huge blow to the media narrative that same-sex “marriage” is inevitable. The margin was so large that even MSNBC News had to use words like “overwhelming” and “landslide” to describe the victory. Black voters supported the marriage amendment by a 2-1 margin. As the votes poured in against same-sex “marriage” in a moderate swing state, PPP polling (a Democratic polling firm) tweeted: “Hate to say it, but I don’t believe polls showing majority support for gay marriage nationally. Any time there’s a vote, it doesn’t back it up.”

Yet too many conservative elites, including those at Fox News, have kowtowed to the politically correct opinion on same-sex “marriage.”

Some do so reluctantly because they have been cowed into believing defeat is inevitable.

Some do so because they think the "base" is wrong on the subject, and they want to bring the Republican Party slowly on board with their own avant-garde moral values.

Tuesday's vote in North Carolina should explode the cover of both camps.

By a margin of 22 points, the people of this moderate swing state that voted for Obama in 2008 decisively rejected same-sex “marriage.”

Elites are busy running from it, believing the fantasies spread by Human Rights Campaign and other same-sex “marriage” advocates that somehow an issue that garners the repeated majority support of Americans (in every state from North Carolina to California) is bad for the GOP.

Sometimes people ask me: Given the wall of hatred now directed at anyone who opposes same-sex “marriage,” why do I continue to fight?

Two reasons:

The first and most important is that marriage matters. Same-sex “marriage” is based on a falsehood about human nature: Same-sex unions are not marriages; they do not serve the same purpose as unions of husband and wife.

Same-sex “marriage” is a profoundly political creature, an attempt to use government to redefine reality itself that is unjust and will have consequences.

The second equally important reason is this: I simply cannot stand to see the party of Ronald Reagan abandon the American people out of a misplaced deference to political correctness, fear and willful stupidity.

Tuesday, North Carolina became the 32nd state in a row to vote against same-sex “marriage” when its citizens were given the chance.

If same-sex “marriage” becomes a reality in this great nation, it will not be because the American people have not done everything they can to make their voices heard.

And thanks to Obama’s decision to honestly state his view, the American people will have a choice, not an echo, this November.

Maggie Gallagher is the founder of the

National Organization for Marriage and

has been a syndicated columnist for 15 years.