Colin Powell On Marriage Equality: ‘I Have No Problem With It’ (Video)

Colin Powell, America’s first African-American Secretary of State and first African American Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, today on CNN endorsed same-sex marriage. Powell, who served  under President Reagan, and under both Presidents Bush, told Wolf Blitzer, “I have no problem with it,” when Blitzer asked, “Are you with the President in supporting gay marriage?”

Via Zack Ford at Think Progress:

BLITZER: You were Chairman of the Joint Chiefs when you installed the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy in the U.S. military that prevented gays from serving openly. I know you changed your attitude over these years, but what about gay marriage? Are you with the President in supporting gay marriage?

POWELL: I have no problem with it, and it was the Congress that imposed Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, though it was certainly my position and my recommendation to get us out of an even worse outcome that could have occurred, as you’ll recall. But as I’ve thought about gay marriage, I know a lot of friends who are individually gay but are in partnerships with loved ones, and they are as stable a family as my family is, and they raise children. And so I don’t see any reason not to say that they should be able to get married.

Secretary Powell by 2010 had fully come out for the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and in 2008 had said:

“We definitely should re-evaluate it. It’s been fifteen years since “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, which was a policy that became a law. I didn’t want it to become a law but it became a law… Attitudes have changed.”

Powell, who is now 75, is a life-long Republican but supported Barack Obama in 2008 for President.