President Barack Obama will endorse gay
marriage after the November general election, former Bush
administration official Ari Fleischer predicted on Tuesday.
During an appearance on CNN's Anderson
Cooper 360, Fleischer, who served as White House Press Secretary
under President George W. Bush, suggested that Obama has yet to
reveal his real agenda.
“What's most important to President
Obama is maneuvering, political maneuvering to get through what I
guess he views as flexibility day, which the rest of us call election
day,” he said.
“Once flexibility day is over for
President Obama, then he's going to be free to take other positions.
… After the election, he's going to be free to raise taxes on
people, free to have more debt piled on the country. I think he's
going to change his position on gay marriage as well. He'll probably
come out for it after the election.” (The video is embedded in the
right panel of this page. Visit
our video library for more videos.)
Obama, who has previously said he
supports civil unions for gay and lesbian couples and is “evolving”
on marriage, could be caught in a bind over the issue as gay rights
groups and prominent Democrats openly call on the president to finish
his evolution on the issue.
The Obama campaign has confirmed that
it will highlight
the president's record on gay rights in an effort to energize gay
voters.
Richard Socarides, a former Clinton
White House official, told the AP that the issue might become
“unavoidable” for the president as more states debate the issue.
“Even though he might want to avoid
this, I think he's going to come up right against it in so many
situations in the next couple of months,” he said.
Michelle
Obama recently appeared to nudge the president on the issue,
saying at a fundraiser that his recent Supreme Court appointees could
have an effect on “whether we can love whomever we choose.”
U.S. Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren
in an interview with gay weekly The Washington Blade openly
called on the president to endorse marriage equality.
“I want to see the president evolve
because I believe that is right; marriage equality is morally right,”
she said.