President-elect Obama's answer to a 1996 Outlines newspaper question on marriage was: "I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages." There was no use of the phrase "civil unions". [Outlines purchased Windy City Times in 2000 and merged companies; I co-founded WCT in 1985 and Outlines in 1987, and was able to bring them together in 2000.]
This answer is among those included in this week's Windy City Times feature on Obama's evolving position on gay marriage. Windy City Times also includes his answers to the candidate questionnaire of IMPACT, at one time a gay political action committee in Illinois. In that survey he also stated his support of same-sex marriage.
During the final weeks of the presidential campaign last fall, several media outlets contacted Windy City Times because of an old internet story from the 1996 Illinois state Senate race. In that campaign, Outlines newspaper reported that 13th District candidate Barack Obama supported gay marriage. Reporters wanted to know what exactly Obama had said.
Outlines summarized the results in that 1996 article by Trudy Ring, but did not list exact answers to questions. In that article Outlines did note that Obama was a supporter of same-sex marriage; that article was never challenged or corrected by Obama. Just recently, the original Outlines and IMPACT surveys were found in our archives (sometimes me being a pack-rat matters). I have been scanning old files as part of the Chicago Gay History Project I founded as a labor of love in 2007.
More recently, as Obama has run for higher office, from U.S. senate to president, he has further shaped his views on marriage, and now he does not back same-sex marriage, but favors civil unions.
My Jan. 14 Windy City Times article looks at Obama's marriage record, including from a 2004 interview I conducted with the U.S. senate hopeful. The paper also has an article by Timothy Stewart-Winter, a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago, who is writing his dissertation on lesbian and gay politics in Chicago. Stewart-Winter provides a look at the context of Obama's race in 1996 against incumbent Alice Palmer.
As the inauguration nears, it is interesting to look back at the evolution of Obama's views, from at first full acceptance to gay marriage, then to a "practical" approach on wording, to now a more religious take -- not backing marriage itself because of religious reasons, but still backing civil unions. The problem is, governments (federal and states) use the word "marriage" in very non-religious ways, providing more than 1,000 federal and countless state benefits. For now, civil unions are separate and quite unequal.
The full articles and copies of the Outlines and IMPACT 1996 questionnaires are available online at www.windycitymediagroup.com or click here starting Jan. 14, and at hundreds of Chicago-area delivery locations.
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