Washington: Another flurry of reactions is likely to follow on Thursday when a full interview airs with President Barack Obama endorsing same-sex 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 said in an interview.
Excerpts aired Wednesday evening on “World News With Diane Sawyer,” but the full interview will appear on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Obama once opposed such marriages. He later indicated his views were “evolving.”
“I had hesitated on gay marriage, in part, because I thought civil unions would be sufficient,” the president said. “I was sensitive to the fact that — for a lot of people — that the word marriage is something that provokes very powerful traditions and religious beliefs.”
But, Obama said, his thinking shifted as he witnessed committed same-sex marriages and thought about US service personnel who were “not able to commit themselves in a marriage.”
In 2011, the Pentagon stopped enforcement of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on homosexuals serving in the military. That change played a part in Obama’s announced stance on same-sex marriage.
“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 told ABC.
The announcement puts Obama squarely at odds with presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who on Wednesday said during an appearance in Oklahoma, “I believe marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman.”
In comments Wednesday to another US TV, Romney reiterated his opposition to same-sex marriage.
“And I do not favor civil unions if they are identical to marriage other than by name,” Romney said during a visit to Fort Lupton. “My view is the domestic partnership benefits, hospital visitation rights and the like are appropriate, but that the others are not.”
The issue is a divisive one in American politics, but it’s uncertain how the development might play out at the voting booth.
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