Obama: ‘My Sense Is The Supreme Court Is About To Make A Shift’ For Marriage Equality

Watch as President Barack Obama says he believes same-sex couples will win marriage at the Supreme Court.

“My sense is that the Supreme Court is about to make a shift, one that I welcome, which is to recognize that — having hit a critical mass of states that have recognized same-sex marriage — it doesn’t make sense for us to now have this patchwork system,” President Barack Obama told Buzzfeed News Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith in an interview published Tuesday evening. “It’s time to recognize that under the equal protection clause of the United States [Constitution], same-sex couples should have the same rights as anybody else.”

The President also spoke of the resistance to same-sex marriage coming from Alabama, and specifically from its Chief Justice, Roy Moore.

“When federal law is in conflict with state law, federal law wins out,” Obama observed, adding “we have a supremacy clause in our Constitution.”

The Alabama Chief Justice has ordered his probate judges to not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. As of Tuesday morning, 51 of 67 counties were not observing a federal ruling instructing them to allow same-sex couples to marry. That number reported is shrinking.

Tuesday evening, Judge Moore told Bloomberg he does not believe even the U.S. Supreme Court has the right to redefine marriage.

President Obama noted Judge Moore’s history of conflict with federal law and the U.S. Supreme Court.

“My recollection is that Judge Moore had a similar problem with a federal court ruling that you couldn’t put a huge Ten Commandments statue in the middle of your courthouse and, ultimately, federal law was obeyed, and I think that the same thing will end up happening here,” Obama said. “I think that the courts at the federal level will have something to say to him.”

 

Image: Screenshot via Buzzfeed News on Facebook