Blade's Chris Johnson asks Gibbs if Obama has actually backtracked on marriage

In 1996, State Senate candidate Barack Obama indicated his support for same-sex marriage, stating "I support legalizing same-sex marriagem and would fight efforts to prohibit those marriages." See for yourself: The Windy City Times has the actual documents.

As we know, in 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama said he opposed same-sex marriage, but supported civil unions. At a forum with Rick Warren in August of 2008, Obama actually said "God is in the mix."

Of late, to both Kerry Eleveld and me, President Obama indicated that, now, he's evolving on marriage. But, did he devolve before he's evolving?

Today, the Washington Blade's Chris Johnson asked Robert Gibbs about Obama's 1996 position on marriage. Needless to say, Gibbs deflected the question. Here's the video:

The reelection campaign won't be able to deflect this issue. The President has to get back to his 1996 position, sooner rather than later.

NOTE FROM JOHN: Wow this is really bad. Gibbs outright refuses to answer the question about whether or not Obama was in fact for marriage in 1996 (he was). We shouldn't have uncomfortable answers from this White House on civil rights questions. And far too often, that's what we get from Robert Gibbs - extreme discomfort answering questions about our community. Barack Obama was for marriage equality in 1996, now he's (supposedly) not - we deserve an explanation as to what went wrong.