Van Jones, a former adviser to
President Barack Obama, and MSNBC's Alex Wagner have strongly
suggested they would like to see Obama support gay marriage.
During the Monday edition of NOW
with Alex Wagner, host Alex Wagner and a panel discussed Obama's
position on the issue.
Obama has said he supports civil unions
for gay and lesbian couples and is “evolving” on gay marriage.
Noting the National Organization for
Marriage's (NOM) strategy
of pitting minority groups against gay marriage supporters,
Wagner asked Jones, a fellow at the Center for American Progress,
whether the president would “lose some of the black vote if in fact
he did come out in support of gay marriage?”
“I think if President Obama came out
as gay he wouldn't … President Obama is not going to lose the black
vote, no matter what he does,” Jones joked.
“I don't understand this particular
strategy,” added Jones, who is African-American. “It's not a
hard-core issue for that many African-Americans. In fact, I don't
even understand the argument that gay marriage is a threat to
marriage. It's not like, if the gay people get married, then the
heterosexual people got to get divorced. There's some shortage of
marriage, they're coming to get all the marriage that's left. It's
just kind of nuts.”
“Then why not just come out in
support of it,” Wagner said. “I think that there's a broad
acknowledgment … that the president is of course in support of gay
marriage, he just can't say it yet.” (The video is embedded in the
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(Related: Elizabeth
Warren calls on Obama to endorse gay marriage.)