After VP Joe Biden's statements on his support of gay marriage on Sunday, WH strategist David Axelrod spoke about the issue on a conference call with reporters. He refers to Mitt Romney's financial support of opposition to gay marriage laws. While Jay Carney did not have any updates to the WH position on gay marriage, they are directing attention to Romney's stance against it.
The former Massachusetts governor “has funded efforts to roll back marriage laws in California and other places,” Axelrod said, adding that Romney “believes that we need a constitutional amendment banning the right of gay couples to marry and would take us backward not forward. There’s a very clear distinction in this race.”
Axelrod was referring to a state political action committee run by Romney, Free & Strong America PAC Alabama, that gave $10,000 to a conservative group that has come under scrutiny for plans to “drive a wedge” between African Americans and gays. The PAC, one of a network of state-level PACs that has raised and disbursed money on Romney’s behalf, gave the donation in 2008 to the National Organization for Marriage, which at the time was working to pass Proposition 8 banning same-sex marriage in California, disclosure records show.
He reiterated the comment on CNN
David Axelrod, appearing on CNN's Piers Morgan Tonight, reiterated that "the policy that the Vice President was describing there...is the President's policy." Axelrod went on say that the President's position is "a big distinction between him and...Romney, who supported the effort financially in California...a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage."
Link to video
Meanwhile, Mitt Romney has stated his position on gay marriage in an NPR interview in 2011, blaming gay people for changing what they wanted:
"The story on same-sex marriage is that I have the same position on that I had when I ran from the very beginning," Romney said in an interview last month with the Nashua Telegraph in New Hampshire.
"I'm in favor of traditional marriage. I oppose same-sex marriage. At the same time, I don't believe in discriminating in employment or opportunity for gay individuals. So I favor gay rights; I do not favor same-sex marriage. That has been my position all along."
At the time, Romney stated: "I agree with 3,000 years of recorded history. ... Marriage is an institution between a man and a woman."
"What happened was that the gay community changed their perspective as to what they wanted,"