Obama Pretended He Opposed Gay Marriage In 2008 Campaign, Adviser Claims

Candidate Barack Obama secretly supported gay marriage while saying just the opposite for political reasons during the 2008 presidential campaign.

That’s the contention of key adviser and campaign strategist David Axelrod in a new book called Believer: My 40 Years in Politics. Axelrod was equivalent of Karl Rove in the George W. Bush inner circle.

You may remember that VP Joe Biden spilled the beans, or is perceived as doing so, about the president’s private support for gay marriage in a May 2012 Meet the Press interview. Obama subsequently expressed public support for same-sex marriage in the run-up to the 2012 election.

According to Axelrod, Obama actually supported gay marriage since 1996, when he filled out a questionnaire indicating that he favored legalizing same-sex marriage, but even about two years after becoming president, he told the news media that he was still “evolving” on the issue.

It turns out this was just for political expediency and that Obama’s views on the issue were already “fully evolved,” the Axelrod memoir claims. “I’m just not very good at bulls*****g,” Obama allegedly told Axelrod about concealing his support for same-sex marriage.

In addition to the president’s personal support of same-sex marriage, Obama-appointed federal judges have tossed out gay marriage bans that have been previously duly enacted in states across the country, often by voter referendum.

In 2008 while running for president, however, Obama said — citing his Christian heritage — that marriage is a union between one man and one woman, Time reports in a story on the Axelrod tome.

“Axelrod writes that he knew Obama was in favor of same-sex marriages during the first presidential campaign, even as Obama publicly said he only supported civil unions, not full marriages. Axelrod also admits to counseling Obama to conceal that position for political reasons. ‘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,’ Axelrod writes.”

Added Axelrod in an interview, “There’s no doubt that [Obama’s] sympathies were very much on the side of allowing gay couples to marry. He also recognized that the country wasn’t there yet — that we needed to bring the country along. He was sensitive to the fact that there was a lot of opposition in the black community…”

During the 2012 election, Obama claimed in the alternative during an interview with ABC’s Robin Robers that he changed his mind on the same-sex marriage issue because of his daughters, the Daily Caller recounted.

AP noted today that White House press secretary Josh Earnest didn’t dispute David Axelrod’s published recollection about the Obama gay marriage issue (see clip above).

Are you surprised that President Obama pretended to oppose gay marriage while seeking the White House in 2008?