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Obama voices his support for gay marriage
President Barack Obama speaks Tuesday in Washington. PHOTO/Evan Vucci/AP
Ending months of equivocation, President Barack Obama declared his support for gay marriage on Wednesday, an announcement fraught with history that also injects a potentially polarizing issue into the 2012 race for the White House.
“I have hesitated on gay marriage in part because I thought that civil unions would be sufficient,” Obama said in an interview with ABC at the White House. He added that, “I was sensitive to the fact that for a lot of people the word ‘marriage’ was something that invokes very powerful traditions, religious beliefs and so forth.”
Now, he said, “it is important for me personally to go ahead and affirm that same-sex couples should be able to get married.”
Obama’s announcement cheered gay rights groups who have long urged him to support gay marriage. It also opened up a new area of disagreement with Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who opposes gay marriage.
Polling suggests the nation is evenly divided on the issue.
Obama spoke about his support for gay marriage in deeply personal terms, saying his young daughters, Malia and Sasha, have friends whose parents are same-sex couples.
“Malia and Sasha, it wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated different,” Obama said. “It doesn’t make sense to them and frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective.”
