Obama misled voters about his views on gay marriage, new book reveals

‘Politician obscures truth’ isn’t much of a headline, but when that politician is the man now in the Oval Office and that truth is about marriage, then it’s worth paying attention.

According to David Axelrod, the President’s former strategist who now advises the Labour Party, Barack Obama told voters he believed marriage was between one man and one woman, when actually he didn’t.

The comments come in Axelrod’s book – Believer: My Forty Years in Politics – where he writes that gay marriage was a “particularly nagging issue” for the future US leader.

He said: “For as long as we had been working together, Obama had felt a tug between his personal views and the politics of gay marriage.”

Axelrod added: “Opposition to gay marriage was particularly strong in the black church, and as he ran for higher office, he grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage”.

“He routinely stumbled over the question when it came up in debates or interviews”, he said.

The President responded to the revelation by saying the idea he was always in favour of “marriage per se isn’t quite accurate”.

But the comments from such a senior former Obama man will leave many questioning why the US President knowingly misled voters on an issue as important as marriage.