Obama Urges LGBT Acceptance at Brandenburg Gate

President Barrack Obama returned to the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin today nearly 50 years to the day after John F. Kennedy's famous "ich bin ein Berliner" speech at the height of the Cold War. In an address with topics ranging from U.S. and Russian nuclear disarmament to closing Guantanamo Bay, Obama drew cheers from the crowd of thousands when speaking of the need to fight intolerance, specifically mentioning anti-LGBT discrimination.

"I'd suggest that peace with justice begins with the example we set here at home, for we know from our own histories that intolerance breeds injustice. Whether it's based on race, or religion, gender or sexual orientation, we are stronger when all our people -- no matter who they are or what they look like -- are granted opportunity, and when our wives and our daughters have the same opportunities as our husbands and our sons.

When we respect the faiths practiced in our churches and synagogues, our mosques and our temples, we're more secure. When we welcome the immigrant with his talents or her dreams, we are renewed. When we stand up for our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters and treat their love and their rights equally under the law, we defend our own liberty as well. We are more free when all people can pursue their own happiness. And as long as walls exist in our hearts to separate us from those who don't look like us, or think like us, or worship as we do, then we're going to have to work harder, together, to bring those walls of division down."

Obama's Berlin visit is the final leg of a three-day European visit that included a G-8 summit meeting in Ireland.

For a full transcript of todays speech, visit WhiteHouse.gov