THE PROGRESSIVE REVIEW - October 23, 2014

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*-- Obama broadens stance on same-sex marriage, calls it a Constitutional right --*
NEW YORK (UPI) - President Barack Obama has broadened his "evolving" views on same-sex marriage, telling the New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin that gay couples have a Constitutional right to marry.

"Ultimately, I think the Equal Protection Clause does guarantee same-sex marriage in all fifty states," Obama said in a new interview about his legal legacy.

He's referring to the 14th Amendment, which requires states to apply laws equally to all citizens.

In May 2012, Obama became the first U.S. president to express personal support for same-sex marriage, though he said the issue should be "worked out at a local level."

Obama, a former constitutional law professor, also praised the Supreme Court's "strategic" decision not to hear arguments on lower courts' rulings against state gay-marriage bans.

"There have been times where the stars were aligned and the Court, like a thunderbolt, issues a ruling like Brown v. Board of Education, but that's pretty rare," he told Toobin. "And, given the direction of society, for the Court to have allowed the process to play out the way it has may make the shift less controversial and more lasting."

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