MSNBC: Hillary’s Gay Marriage Position Changed From Last Year

MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts and Joy Reid noted that Hillary Clinton had undergone a politically convenient evolution on same-sex marriage on Wednesday’s “MSNBC Live.”

Roberts pointed out that Clinton’s statement that she hopes the Supreme Court will rule that same-sex marriage is a constitutional right is “a different line” than Hillary’s position in an interview she conducted with NPR last year, where she said, “for me, marriage had always been a matter left to the states…I fully endorse the efforts by activists who work state-by-state,” and that after leaving the Secretary of State’s office she was able to “very quickly announce that I was fully in support of gay marriage and that it is now continuing to proceed state-by-state.”

Reid added, “I think that it’s pretty clear that there was a position that Democrats had to have to be viable in 2008, which is the position that both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had, which was essentially that they are — for faith reasons they were not in favor of full marriage equality. And there’s the position you need to have in 2015. Hillary Clinton is running, in part, to prove to progressives that she is one of them. She’s constantly having to re-up, and prove those bona fides, and so, I think it’s important for her to now come down fully on the side of marriage equality. That’s the position that is necessary to be in a Democratic primary in 2015.”

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