[Image, above: Screen shot from ABC News’s This Week on Sunday, Feb. 19, 2012. Image, below: Gibbs.]
The question of whether marriage equality will be a part of the Democratic Party platform this year was placed to the Obama campaign squarely today. The response: “I don’t know.”
ABC News’s Jake Tapper, guest hosting This Week, today asked former White House press secretary for President Obama and senior campaign advisor Robert Gibbs the question. Citing Metro Weekly‘s exclusive report about House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)’s support for the plank’s inclusion, Tapper asked whether, in the context of Obama’s “evolving” thoughts on marriage equality, the platform would include such a plank.
Gibbs: “I don’t know the answer to that.”
In answering, he said that he hadn’t spoken with Obama on the issue and focused in on opposing employment discrimination, but he said, more broadly, that people shouldn’t be judged based on their sexual orientation when “applying for a job or doing anything.”
Left unstated is whether “getting married” is a part of Gibbs’s “anything.”
The exchange was at the end of the interview before a commercial break, so Tapper had no chance to ask a follow-up question right then and there.
The full platform plank, proposed on Feb. 13 by Freedom to Marry, states: “We support the full inclusion of all families in the life of our nation, with equal respect, responsibilities, and protections under the law, including the freedom to marry. Government has no business putting barriers in the path of people seeking to care for their family members, particularly in challenging economic times. We support the Respect for Marriage Act and the overturning of the federal so-called Defense of Marriage Act, and oppose discriminatory constitutional amendments and other attempts to deny the freedom to marry to loving and committed same-sex couples.”
Since Pelosi’s announcement, made in response to a question asked about the plank by Metro Weekly, the co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus also announced their support for the plank.
The platform — a detailed statement of the party’s positions that will be finalized at the Democratic National Convention to take place in Charlotte, North Carolina, this September — has never included language in support of the right of same-sex couples to marry.
Obama, opposed marriage equality in the 2008 campaign. He said in December 2010, as referenced today by Tapper, that his position on marriage equality was “evolving” but that he still “struggle[s]” with it. Obama’s current White House press secretary, Jay Carney, said this past week of Obama’s position, “You know his position, where it stands now, on the issue of same-sex marriage, so I really don’t have much to add on that.”
Obama currently supports much of the Freedom to Marry plank language — outside of the marriage equality language itself. He has endorsed the Respect for Marriage Act, which would repeal DOMA, and, as Carney and Gibbs have said repeatedly, opposes “divisive and discriminatory efforts to deny rights and benefits to same-sex couples” such as California’s Proposition 8.
Gibbs’s response to Tapper today marks the first on-the-record response from the Obama campaign on the issue of the platform plank. Metro Weekly had made several requests previously for comment about the platform plank to the campaign.
READ the exchange between Tapper and Gibbs:
TAPPER: Very quickly — we have about 20 seconds left — Nancy Pelosi came out and said she supports a plank in the Democratic Party’s official platform that would say, quote, “We support the full inclusion of all families in the life of our nation with equal respect, responsibilities and protections under the law, including the freedom to marry.”
I know the president says he’s, quote, unquote, “still evolving” on this issue. Will there be a same-sex marriage plank in the Democratic Party platform this summer?
GIBBS: Jake, I don’t know the answer to that. And I don’t know — I haven’t talked to the president at all recently on this issue.
I think we all look to and want to live in a world where, if you’re applying for a job or doing anything, you’re not judged on your sexual orientation. You shouldn’t be. And I think living in a society where that doesn’t happen is a society we all want to live.
In her first televised interview since her 2020 confirmation, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett appeared on CBS Sunday Morning to promote her new book, offering only vague commentary to host Norah O’Donnell in defense of the Court’s legitimacy when asked whether justices might overturn Obergefell v. Hodges.
Barrett was pressed on recent remarks from former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who told the Raging Moderates podcast that the Court will likely “do to gay marriage what they did to abortion” and “send it back to the states.”
Jason Collins, the first openly gay NBA player, is reportedly undergoing treatment for a brain tumor. Collins made headlines more than a decade ago when he came out publicly in a first-person essay for Sports Illustrated.
The 41-year-old former center earned All-American honors at Stanford before being drafted by the Houston Rockets in 2001. Over his 13-year career, he played for several NBA teams, including the New Jersey Nets, Minnesota Timberwolves, Atlanta Hawks, Boston Celtics, and Brooklyn Nets.
With Obergefell at risk and 32 states poised to restrict same-sex marriage, LGBTQ advocates push to enshrine protections at the state level.
By Maximilian Sandefer
August 6, 2025
On June 22, 2022, the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision with Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. Abortion rights were now no longer guaranteed nationwide as the issue was left up to the states. This shock reversal of over 49 years of precedent left reproductive rights activists scrambling as anti-choice state laws stemming from as far back as 1864 were revived and reinstituted.
As people's ability to access to reproductive care dwindled in conservative-led states, activists also found their footing. The 2024 election saw abortion rights ballot measures win in seven out of ten states. As we navigate a landscape where it will likely be a long time before we see any form of successful federal legislation protecting a woman's right to choose, state-by-state activism seems to be the driving force behind change.
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READ the exchange between Tapper and Gibbs:
