WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama tells ABC News' Robin Roberts that he supports gay marriage. He is the first president to take that position.
The announcement ends months of equivocation on a subject with powerful election-year consequences.
Obama says he has concluded that it is important for him to affirm that he thinks same-sex couples should be able to get married. He says he came to the conclusion over the course of several years of talking to family and friends.
Obama has previously said his personal views of gay marriage were evolving, a stance that frustrated gay rights supporters.
"I have hesitated on gay marriage in part because I thought that civil unions would be sufficient," Obama said in an interview with ABC at the White House. He added that, "I was sensitive to the fact that for a lot of people the word `marriage' was something that invokes very powerful traditions, religious beliefs and so forth."
Now, he said, "it is important for me personally to go ahead and affirm that same-sex couples should be able to get married."
Obama spoke about his support for gay marriage in deeply personal terms, saying his young daughters, Malia and Sasha, have friends whose parents are same-sex couples.
"Malia and Sasha, it wouldn't dawn on them that somehow their friends' parents would be treated different," Obama said. "It doesn't make sense to them and frankly, that's the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective."
Obama said his wife Michelle Obama was also involved in his decision and joins him in supporting gay marriage.
"In the end the values that I care most deeply about and she cares most deeply about is how we treat other people," he said.
Acknowledging that his support for same-sex marriage may rankle religious conservatives, Obama said he thinks about his faith in part through the prism of the Golden Rule -- treating others the way you would want to be treated.
"That's what we try to impart to our kids and that's what motivates me as president and I figure the most consistent I can be in being true to those precepts, the better I'll be as a as a dad and a husband and hopefully the better I'll be as president," Obama said.
The announcement comes less than a day after North Carolina passed a same-sex marriage ban amendment. Obama and the Democratic Party are set to gather in Charlotte in September for their national convention.
Opponents of the marriage amendment have been calling for the White House to put its support behind their movement to stop the Amendment. When that support did not come in time for the primary, a group of activists mobilized and started a petition to move the Democratic National Convention out of Charlotte and North Carolina into a state that "supports equality."
The online movement has more than 21,000 signatures.
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