While running against Alan Keyes for the Senate seat he now holds, Barack Obama took the position that “marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman”, and the issue of same sex marriage should be left up to the States. This is a Federalist view of the same sex marriage debate, and one which I support. In recent years however we have witnessed two States, Massachusetts and California, pass laws outlawing same sex marriage, only to have those laws overturned by the courts.

The State Supreme Court’s in both cases ruled that the State Constitution does not allow for legislator’s to discriminate against homosexuals in regards to marriage, therefore it would be necessary to amend the State Constitution in order to outlaw gay marriage. California is attempting to do just that, proposing a Constitutional amendment which would define marriage as between a man and a woman.

Barack Obama would have supported such an initiative in 2004 as evidenced by his debate with Alan Keyes over same sex marriage:

Throughout the campaign, Obama has said that he opposes gay marriage but is in favor of civil unions. During a taping of WBBM-AM’s “At Issue,” he was asked his personal views on gay marriage. “I’m a Christian, and so although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman,”

Obama said decisions on gay marriage should be left to the states, and he opposes a constitutional amendment barring the act.

To be clear, the Constitutional amendment he was referring to is the United States Constitution, not the Constitution of an individual State. What a difference four years can make. Once again Obama has changed his mind on a major issue, writing a letter over the weekend to the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club which stated his opposition to the State of California attempting to define marriage as being between a man and a woman.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama, who previously said the issue of gay marriage should be left up to each state, has announced his opposition to a California ballot measure that would ban same-sex marriages.

In a letter to the Alice B. Toklas LGBT Democratic Club read Sunday at the group’s annual Pride Breakfast in San Francisco, the Illinois senator said he supports extending “fully equal rights and benefits to same-sex couples under both state and federal law.”

“And that is why I oppose the divisive and discriminatory efforts to amend the California Constitution, and similar efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution or those of other states,” Obama wrote.

It has always been Obama’s stance that the United States Constitution should not be amended to define marriage, and as I said, I agree with that position. His previous position however was that the issue should be resolved by the individual States, yet he has now reversed himself saying he opposes any such attempt by the States to define marriage. I am willing to predict that we see Obama attempt to straddle this issue in the near future, saying that he continues to believe that marriage should be defined as between a man and a woman, but he does not believe States should amend their Constitutions in order to define it as such.

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Barack Obama, Constitution, Features, Homosexuality