Barack Obama publicly took a more rightward stance on social issues as he moved into the national scene, documents acquired by the Windy City Times found.

A questionnaire Obama filled out for a gay and lesbian Chicago paper in 1996 shows that he supported same-sex marriage — a position he now, in the national spotlight, claims to be against.

“I favor legalizing same-sex marriages,and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages,” Obama wrote in the typed, signed, statement.

There was no use of “civil unions,” and “no compromise whatsoever,” the Windy City Times story today notes.

On another questionnaire the same year, Obama said he would support a resolution in support of same-sex marriage.

Why would he switch from publicly supporting gay marriage to publicly opposing it? As far as I can tell he attended the same church — Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ  — until his public condemnation of Wright during the election. But he’d already taken an anti-gay marriage stance by that point.

Well, it could have something to do with the fact that even deep-blue California, with the help of African Americans and Hispanics, passed legislation banning the practice. Supporting same-sex marriage in Chicago is a different ball game than taking the same stance while trying to win, say, Virginia and North Carolina. It wasn’t a politically-beneficial belief to have while running for president.

Via Hot Air.