Vice President Joe Biden has endorsed
gay marriage.
Appearing Sunday on NBC's Meet the
Press, Biden told
host David Gregory that he is “absolutely comfortable with the fact
that men marrying men, women marrying women.” He then added, “The
president sets the policy.”
An indication that Biden was shifting
towards acceptance could be found in his 2010 remarks on the ABC
morning talk show Good Morning America, where he compared gay
marriage to repeal of “Don't Ask, Don't Tell,” the now scrapped
policy which banned gay and bisexual troops from serving openly.
“Well, I think the country is
evolving,” Biden told George Stephanopoulos, “I think there is an
inevitability for a national consensus on gay marriage. That is my
view.”
“I remember the first time [Obama]
met with the Joint Chiefs – I was with him. He said, 'Gentlemen, I
want you to prepare now. I want to end 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell.' And
so he prepared the ground so that it is as widely accepted as it is
today by the military. And I think the same thing is happening
across the country with regard to the issue of marriage,” he said.
In 2008, Biden, whose home state,
Delaware, recognizes gay couples with civil unions, was squarely
opposed to marriage equality.
While the vice president said that he
believed “there should be no civil rights distinction, none
whatsoever, between a committed gay couple and a committed
heterosexual couple,” he also added that neither he nor Barack
Obama “support redefining from a civil side what constitutes
marriage. We do not support that.”