WASHINGTON — It can now, apparently, be told: During his run for the presidency and his first years in the White House, President Barack Obama deceived the American public about his position on same-sex marriage.
The revelation, underwhelming as it may be to those who followed the debate closely, came in a passage from the president’s longtime aide and adviser David Axelrod in his new book, Believer: My Forty Years In Politics. Axelrod admits that Obama personally supported the legalization of marriage equality for same-sex couples but claimed he didn’t for political reasons.
Gay marriage was a particularly nagging issue. For as long as we had been working together, Obama had felt a tug between his personal views and the politics of gay marriage…. [H]e grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a “sacred union.” Having prided himself on forthrightness, though, Obama never felt comfortable with his compromise and, no doubt, compromised position. He routinely stumbled over the question when it came up in debates or interviews. “I’m just not very good at bullshitting,” he said with a sigh after one such awkward exchange.
It had long been assumed that Obama supported gay marriage and hid it for the sake of political expedience. After all, he had signed a questionnaire in 1996 while running for the state senate in Illinois saying he was a proponent. Would it really be possible that he regressed while the rest of the country evolved?
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Here is the full excerpt from Axelrod’s book (pp. 446-447):
“Gay marriage was a particularly nagging issue. For as long as we had been working together, Obama had felt a tug between his personal views and the politics of gay marriage. As a candidate for the state senate in 1996 from liberal Hyde Park, he signed a questionnaire promising his support for legalization. I had no doubt that this was his heartfelt belief. “I just don’t feel my marriage is somehow threatened by the gay couple next door,” he told me. Yet he also knew his view was way out in front of the public’s. Opposition to gay marriage was particularly strong in the black church, and as he ran for higher office, he grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a “sacred union.” Having prided himself on forthrightness, though, Obama never felt comfortable with his compromise and, no doubt, compromised position. He routinely stumbled over the question when it came up in debates or interviews. “I’m just not very good at bullshitting,” he said with a sigh after one such awkward exchange.
By 2010 he had told reporters that his position was “evolving,” and in 2011 the administration announced that it would no longer fight in court to uphold the Defense of Marriage Act, a controversial Clinton-era law absolving federal and state governments of their obligation to recognize gay marriages sanctioned in states where they were legal. Yet if Obama’s views were “evolving” publicly, they were fully evolved behind closed doors. The president was champing at the bit to announce his support for the right of gay and lesbian couples to wed — and having watched him struggle with this issue for years, I was ready, too. Jim Messina, the campaign manager, was nervous about the impact of such a step. “We’ve looked at this and it could cost you a couple of battleground states; North Carolina, for one,” he said. By year’s end, however, Obama was no longer interested in analysis. “I just want you guys to know that if a smart reporter asks me how I would vote on this if I were still in the state legislature, I’m going to tell the truth. I would vote yes.”
