Chicago Tribune

By Michael A. Memoli and Kathleen Hennessey

President Obama, marking the end of a prolonged “evolution” on the issue, now favors allowing homosexual couples to marry, he said in a television interview Wednesday.

The announcement comes days after Vice President Joe Biden’s comments that he was “absolutely comfortable” with gay marriage put new pressure on Obama to clarify his position on the issue.

Obama told ABC’s Robin Roberts Wednesday: “Over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point 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’s new position realigns him with the growing number of Democratic officials who have embraced full marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples. Gay-rights activists have widely believed that the president privately supported same-sex marriages, but withheld a public declaration out of concerns about alienating independent voters in key swing states.

There is a movement among activists in the party to adopt a so-called “marriage equality” plank in the official platform this summer. Such language would mark the continuance of the party’s own evolution. In 2000, the Democratic platform stated simply that the party supported “the full inclusion of gay and lesbian families in the life of the nation,” and “an equitable alignment of benefits.”

In 2004, in the face of an effort supported by the Bush campaign to put gay marriage bans to statewide referendums across the country, the Democratic platform stated that marriage “has been defined at the state level for 200 years, and we believe it should continue to be defined there.”

By 2008, the party vowed to “enact a comprehensive bipartisan employment non-discrimination act,” and opposed the Defense of Marriage Act “and all attempts to use this issue to divide us.”

It has been nearly a year and a half since Obama first indicated that his stance against gay marriage, but in support of “strong civil unions,” had begun to evolve. Obama has in fact taken multiple stances on the issue. In 1996, as a candidate for the state Senate in Illinois, he told a gay rights group that he favored same-sex marriages and would fight efforts to block them. As a candidate for U.S. Senate in 2004, Obama said he believed marriage is between a man and a woman, citing his faith as the underpinning reason for that belief.

In 2008, he repeated that assertion to influential evangelical pastor Rick Warren, adding “for me as a Christian it’s also a sacred union, God’s in the mix.” But Obama also said he would not support an amendment adding that definition to the Constitution.

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