Michelle Obama has only gone so far as to share her husband’s views on gay rights issues. | AP Photo FLOTUS denies supporting gay marriage

First lady Michelle Obama’s office on Tuesday quickly shot down the suggestion that she has ever publicly voiced support for same-sex marriage, a policy her husband opposes even as the left pressures him to take a stand.

“Mrs. Obama has never made any public statements about same-sex marriage,” her communications director, Kristina Schake, said in an email to POLITICO.


The response comes after former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey, a Democrat, suggested Monday night on CNN that Barack and Michelle Obama may not have the same opinion about gay marriage. McGreevey said of the president: “If he could only listen to Michelle more often” when it comes to his stance on same-sex marriage.

McGreevey, who is now openly gay, gave up the governorship in 2004 after revealing that he’d had an affair with a man.

Contacted by POLITICO on Tuesday morning, McGreevey declined to comment.

Schake said the first lady has never “had any conversations with former Gov. McGreevey about the issue.”

McGreevey and Michelle Obama have never met.

Obama has only gone so far as to share her husband’s views on gay-rights issues.

“Barack believes that we must fight for the world as it should be, a world where together we work to reverse discriminatory laws like DOMA and ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’” she said at a 2008 fundraiser. “The world as it is should be one that rejects discrimination of all kinds.”

The president has come under increased pressure to support same-sex marriage after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a bill into law last week that legalizes gay marriages in the state. At a fundraiser in Manhattan hosted by a gay group on Thursday, the day before the bill passed, attendees tried to heckle him into voicing support for the issue.

Instead, he heralded New York’s decision to take on the issue but did so without expressing his opinion. The state “is doing exactly what democracies are supposed to do,” he said. “There’s a debate; there’s deliberation about what it means here in New York to treat people fairly in the eyes of the law.”