Obama: Same-Sex Marriage Should Be Legal

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Business Week
May 10th, 2012

Credit: art_es_anna/Creative Commons

By Kate Anderson Brower

President Barack Obama said same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, the first time he’s declared support for making gay marriage legal.

Obama’s remarks, made in an interview with ABC News, go a step beyond his previous stance on the issue, which was that his initial opposition to same-sex marriage was “evolving.”

The president said that his position has changed as he’s seen same-sex couples in long-term relationships and gays serving in the military.

“I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama told ABC in an excerpt of the interview broadcast by the network.

The president has been under pressure from gay-rights activists to come out forcefully in favor gay marriage after Vice President Joe Biden and Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in recent days they supported it. It also comes amid a confluence of state-level measures and gay fundraising events on behalf of Obama’s re-election campaign.

Obama’s position since late 2010 has been that he once opposed same-sex marriage and that his views were “evolving.” He has stopped short of saying he supports gay marriage. In office he’s promoted policies that advance the rights of gays, including repealing the military’s ban on openly gay service members and giving same-sex partners more equal treatment in areas such as medical decisions.

Battleground Issue

While opinion polls show Americans increasingly approve of same-sex marriage, it remains unpopular in several battleground states as Obama faces election in November. North Carolinians yesterday voted to amend the state constitution to ban gay marriage, and Republicans in the Colorado House killed a measure to allow civil unions.

Both are states Obama won in 2008 and they will be in play in his 2012 campaign against Republican Mitt Romney, who supports amending the Constitution to ban gay marriage. The issue also is divisive in the black and Hispanic communities, two key constituencies for Obama.

Same sex marriage currently is legal in six states and Washington D.C. Maryland and Washington state have passed laws allowing gay marriage that haven’t yet taken effect. Thirty- eight states have laws or constitutional provisions limiting marriage to relationships between a man and a woman, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

[Source: Business Week]