Republican presidential candidate John
Kasich on Tuesday reiterated his opposition to marriage equality but
added, “Let's try to understand each other a little bit.”
The Ohio governor, who is running a
distant third in the GOP race behind Texas Senator Ted Cruz and real
estate mogul Donald Trump, appeared with his wife and daughters at a
CNN town hall.
Kasich was asked about so-called
“religious freedom” laws that are viewed by critics as attempts
to discriminate against the LGBT community.
“I'm a traditional marriage guy,”
Kasich
said. “Okay, I believe a man and a woman. But I went home one
day, I said, 'Sweetie, we've been invited to a gay wedding.' This
was after the court. I said, 'What do you think?' She said, 'Well,
I'm going. I don't know if you are or not.' And we went.”
“We may disagree with something about
people's lifestyles and all those kinds of things, we may disagree,
but you know what? Let's try to understand each other a little bit.”
“What are we going to do, write a
law?”
“I read about this thing they did in
Mississippi where apparently you can deny somebody service because
they're gay. What the hell are we doing in this country?” Kasich
rhetorically asked.
Kasich, though, has not said whether he
would sign a similar proposed bill in Ohio that would protect clergy
from being forced to marry gay and lesbian couples.