Vice President Joe Biden officiated a same-sex wedding Monday after obtaining a temporary certification from the District of Columbia for the ceremony, BuzzFeed News reports. Longtime White House staffers Brian Mosteller and Joe Mahshie were wed Monday afternoon at Biden's Washington D.C. residence, with Biden celebrating the union with a congratulatory tweet:
Mosteller, the director of Oval Office operations, was profiled by the Washington Post earlier this year and touted as "the man who can basically read President Obama's mind." That's a hell of a job title, but Mosteller backs it up with action. "I'm there to make whatever he wants happen," he told the Post in February. "There were these enormous pressures descending on this man and this family. I take away the small pressures with which I can contend so he can focus on the more massive."
Mahshie, according toBuzzFeed, is First Lady Michelle Obama's trip coordinator. Last October, Mahshie was awarded the prestigious Reubin O'D Askew Young Alumni Award by Florida State University, the highest possible honor for young alumni from the FSU Alumni Association:
Surrounding Obama's reelection campaign in 2012, Biden spoke firmly of his support for same-sex marriages, which finally became legal nationwide last year. "I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties," Biden said on Meet the Press at the time. "And quite frankly, I don’t see much of a distinction beyond that."
