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The gay couples from L.A. and Berkeley who were the named parties in the Prop 8 case against the State of California — Jeff Zarrillo and Paul Katami, and Kris Perry and Sandy Stier — spoke on the phone this morning with President Barack Obama on camera for MSNBC. He was on Air Force 1.

He tells them, "We're proud of you guys, and we're so glad that California [is going to allow marriages to resume]. Through your courage, you're going to help a whole lot of people everywhere."

In his official statement regarding today's other decision, on DOMA, he said:

I applaud the Supreme Court's decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act. This was discrimination enshrined in law. It treated loving, committed gay and lesbian couples as a separate and lesser class of people. The Supreme Court has righted that wrong, and our country is better off for it. We are a people who declared that we are all created equal - and the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.

But he was careful to speak to opponents of gay marriage as well.

On an issue as sensitive as this, knowing that Americans hold a wide range of views based on deeply held beliefs, maintaining our nation's commitment to religious freedom is also vital. How religious institutions define and consecrate marriage has always been up to those institutions. Nothing about this decision -- which applies only to civil marriages -- changes that

[MSNBC]