(Image Source: USA Today ) BY CHRISTIAN BRYANT President Barack Obama officially began his second term Monday and, in doing so, delivered a history-making inaugural speech. After citing part of The Declaration of Independence, President Obama called gay rights an essential piece of equality for all Americans.   “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law.” Sources note this as the first time any president has even uttered the word “gay,” much less “gay rights” in an inauguration speech. The POTUS gave a nod to the LGBTQ community in a stanza of civil rights struggles, including the first women’s rights convention in 1848; the march in Selma, Alabama in 1965; and maybe the most timely, the 1969 police raid of the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar in New York. The inaugural address, which was shorter than the president’s speech from 2009, will be dissected for things to come over the next four years. But a Washington Post writer points out the immediate significance of the president’s gay rights stance. “Obama’s latest remarks come at a point gay rights advocates see as a pivotal moment. Maine, Maryland and Washington state all passed new gay marriage laws last November, and Minnesota voters defeated a ban. Polling shows the public is mostly in favor of legalizing gay marriage.” Sources say Obama’s definitive statement preps the battleground ahead of a number of cases regarding the same-sex marriage. The Department of Justice will ask The Supreme Court to declare the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional when it takes up the case in March. In addition, a writer for The New Yorker says, “opponents of California’s Proposition 8 are asking the Court to declare a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage. That could conceivably spell the end of anti-gay-marriage state-constitutional amendments across the country.” Currently, nine states -- Connecticut, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and Washington -- and the District of Columbia have legalized same-sex marriage.