Obama backed same-sex marriage in 1996

A document has emerged suggesting that Obama had taken more public, liberal stands in the past than had been revealed in the digging of reporters and opposition researchers over two years of campaigning, the latest of several pointing to a rightward shift as he moved into national politics.

In a 1996 questionnaire filled out for a Chicago gay and lesbian newspaper, then called Outlines, Obama came out clearly in favor of same-sex marriage, which he has opposed on the public record throughout his short career in national politics.

“I favor legalizing same-sex marriages,and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages,” Obama wrote in the typed, signed, statement.

There was no use of “civil unions,” and "no compromise whatsoever," the Windy City Times story today notes.

On another questionnaire the same year, Obama said he would support a resolution in support of same-sex marriage.

The editor of the Windy City Times, a successor of Outlines, Tracy Baim, said she hadn't deliberately held onto the news until after Obama's election. Baim, who had been the editor of Outlines at the time, said that just before the election, she ran across the old Outline story saying Obama backed same-sex marriage, but only dug his forgotten questionaire out of an old box this week, having assumed that she'd lost it.

Obama now says he opposes same-sex marriage, though he backs giving gays and lesbians a parallel package of marriage-like rights, and opposes a federal ban on same-sex marriage.