Vice President Joe Biden turned some heads on Sunday when he appeared to openly endorse gay marriage, an issue where President Obama has said he’s still “evolving” but hasn’t quite come out in favor of full marriage rights.
Senior Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod insisted for the second day in a row on Monday that there was no difference in their positions, however.
“I think they were entirely consistent with the president’s position, which is that couples who are married, whether they’re gay or heterosexual couples, are entitled to the very same rights and very same liberties,” Axelrod said in a conference call with reporters Monday, “And that’s why the president and the administration has stood down on the DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act] court case. The president believes that the law is unconstitutional and when people are married we ought to recognize those marriages according to the rights to which they’re entitled.”
So the basic position seems to be that Obama won’t say whether he supports legalziing gay marriage, but that it would be wrong to not recognize such marriages on the federal level once legalized by states. Basically, Obama and Biden have tiptoed as close as humanly possible to the ledge of outright support for gay marriage without going over.
