President Obama is going in the record books as the first president to openly express his wholehearted support for same-sex marriages. This issue has come up time and again over the course of three or four presidential elections with Republican candidates strongly opposing the issue and Democratic ones dancing around it. Even this year’s Republican candidate, Mitt Romney, has already said he opposes it and even wants to add an amendment to the Constitution that forbids it.
But Obama throwing his support behind this widely debated social issue brings the conversations voters are having before they hit the ballot boxes this November slightly away from the economy and very much back to this.
During his sit down with ABC’s Robin Roberts, Obama said:
"I had hesitated on gay marriage in part because I thought that civil unions would be sufficient. I was sensitive to the fact that for a lot of people, the word marriage was something that invokes very powerful traditions and religious beliefs. I have to tell you that 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."
He also revealed that he has Michelle’s support:
"This is something that, you know, we’ve talked about over the years and she feels the same way that I do. And that is that, in the end the values that I care most deeply about and she cares most deeply about is how we treat other people. We are both practicing Christians and obviously this position may be considered to put us at odds with the views of others but, when we think about our faith, the thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the Golden Rule; treat others the way you would want to be treated. And I think that’s what we try to impart to our kids and that’s what motivates me as president and I figure the most consistent I can be in being true to those precepts, the better I’ll be as a dad and a husband and, hopefully, the better I’ll be as president."
Watch a clip of President Obama's interview below:
