Obama lied about opposing same-sex marriage, claims his former strategist
US president Barack Obama lied about opposing same-sex marriage during the 2008 presidential election, his former political strategist claims in his new book.
David Axelrod, Obama’s former strategist, writes in his new book ‘Believer: My Forty Years in Politics’, that Obama told him: “I’m just not very good at bullshitting”, after an event where he stated that he was opposed to same-sex marriage.
Axelrod writes in the new book, obtained by TIME magazine, that Obama was always in favour of same-sex marriage, throughout the first presidential campaign, despite saying he only supported civil unions.
Suggesting that Obama said he opposed same-sex marriage in order to appease the “black church”, Axelrod writes: “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'”.
According to the book, the President “never felt comfortable with his compromise”, and “he routinely stumbled over the question when it came up in debates or interviews.”
Obama filled out a questionnaire as a senate candidate in 1996 stating: “I favour legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.”
However during his first presidential campaign, he told Rick Warren’s Saddleback Church that marriage is “the union between a man and a woman.” He said: “Now, for me as a Christian — for me — for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix.”
Obama later said he was “evolving” on the issue, and later announced that he fully supported same-sex marriage.
More recently, the President has been hailed for his progressive stance on LGBT issues.
Axelrod’s book goes on sale on 10 February.
