President-elect Barack Obama

Obama and Same-Sex Marriage

About the president-elect's 1996 letter in support of same-sex marriage, Laffy asked: "What changed?"

Throughout the campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly stated that he's personally not in favor of same-sex marriage, but that he opposes any constitutional amendments that would ban it. To me, he's basically saying, I don't like pie, but I'm not going to take away your right to eat it. Pie. To eat pie.

In the 1996 questionaire, he wrote:

I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.

This is essentially true today -- especially the second half. He's clearly stated his opposition to Prop 8, and I couldn't find any instances when he opposed a law or amendment legalizing same-sex marriage.

So the only thing that's changed is how he speaks about it, underscoring his personal belief which is, of course, differenent from how he plans to govern.