Obama Stymied on Gay Marriage by 'A Whole Bunch of Religious Sensitivities Out There'

(CNSNews.com) - President Obama says his former adviser David Axelrod didn't get it quite right in his new book, when Axelrod wrote that Obama pretended to oppose same-sex marriage before 2012 because he didn't want to alienate voters.

Obama told BuzzFeed News on Tuesday, "I always felt that same-sex couples should be able to enjoy the same rights, legally, as anybody else and so it was frustrating to me not to, I think, be able to square that with what were a whole bunch of religious sensitivities out there."

Instead of backing gay marriage, Obama publicly supported civil unions, a position he found uncomfortable, Axelrod wrote:

"Having prided himself on forthrightness, though, Obama never felt comfortable with his compromise and, no doubt, compromised position," Axelrod wrote in the memoir "Believer: My Forty Years in Politics," released Tuesday.

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