WASHINGTON — Vice President Joe Biden supports same-sex marriage — and said so yesterday in an apparent effort to make the Obama administration appear more forward thinking on the thorny issue.
“I’m absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men and women marrying women and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties . . . I don’t see much of a distinction beyond that,” Biden said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Asked whether a second Obama term would include a gay-marriage proposal, Biden hesitated but cited the president’s elimination of the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy and his cutoff of federal funding for hospitals that don’t allow gays to make life-and-death decisions for their partners.
“More and more Americans . . . understand that this is about a simple proposition: Who do you love? Who do you love?” Biden said.
Obama has described his position on same-sex marriage as “evolving,” irritating some in a community that heavily backed him in 2008.
“Denying any loving couple the chance at happiness and security that comes only through marriage is not only harmful; it’s downright un-American,” said Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation President Herndon Graddick.