(Photo: Thinkstock)CNN's Anderson Cooper set his sights on President Barack Obama this week, taking the President to task for his "evolving" stance on gay marriage.
In a "Keeping Them Honest" segment on his show, "Anderson Cooper 360," the Silver Fox pointed out that the President has gone from checking a box next to "I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages" in 1996 to calling himself "undecided" in 1998 to telling Pastor Rick Warren in 2008 at the Saddleback Church in California, "I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman."
"He now says his position is 'evolving'," Cooper said. "Hard to see how the President's position has changed so much. The only thing that has changed is his need for a wider audience to vote for him."
In the same Saddleback Church forum, however, Obama also said that he would not support a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage because "historically, we have not defined marriage in our Constitution. It's been a matter of state law. That has been our tradition." He said that he does believe in civil unions.
Obama isn't the first politician to flip-flop on a major issue in order to align himself with popular opinion-or to avoid alienating voters, so the fact that his opinion is "evolving" now doesn't surprise us (though it does irritate plenty of people). Maybe the real question is this: Can a politician ever truly separate his or her personal feelings from an issue's political ramifications?
Also on Shine:
- Laura Bush supports abortion rights and gay marriage. Are you as shocked as I am?
- Another powerful argument for gay marriage: This inspiring couple (video)
- President Bush's daughter supports gay marriage
- Proposition 8 and gay marriage
- Wage gap? Parental leave? Workplace issues? Here are some of the Obama administration's answers (video)
