U.S. President Barack Obama on Wednesday voiced his support to same-sex marriage, an issue over which Americans are nearly evenly split.
“It is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama said in an interview with ABC News.
Obama is the first U.S. sitting president to have publicly expressed support to same-sex marriage, which puts him at odds with presidential nominee Mitt Romney, who on Wednesday told his audience in Oklahoma that he believed “marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman,” the CNN reported.
Earlier, Obama opposed such marriages.
North Carolina on Tuesday voted for a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage, already prohibited in the state. Preliminarily, the amendment was approved by a 61-39 percent margin, the CNN said.
