Reid: Democratic party platform will include pro-gay-marriage plank

The Democrats’ top leader in Congress said Thursday that the party’s platform will soon include a plank calling for the legalization of gay marriage.

“The president’s in favor of it — I’m sure it will be [included],” said Reid.

{mosads}Delegates to the Democratic National Convention will meet in Charlotte, N.C., to vote on the party’s platform in early September. 

Voters in North Carolina this week approved a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. 

President Obama said on Wednesday that same-sex marriage should be legal. He said his thinking on the topic evolved after mulling the Golden Rule.

Obama said he was also influenced by dinnertime conversations with his wife and daughters.

“There have been times where Michelle and I have been sitting around the dinner table and we’re talking about their friends and their parents, and Malia and Sasha — it wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated differently. It doesn’t make sense to them and frankly, that’s the kind of thing that prompts a change in perspective,” Obama told ABC News.

Reid said Thursday that he would support the legalization of same-sex marriage in Nevada and admitted to being influenced by his children and grandchildren.

“I would follow my grandchildren and my children,” he said.

Reid, however, declined to say when or whether he would schedule a vote on legislation approved by the Judiciary Committee to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). The law defines marriage as the legal union of a man and a woman and exempts states from having to recognize same-sex marriages certified by other states.

“We’ll be happy to take a look at it — I just don’t know where it is and we have a few other things to do,” Reid said.

He predicted Republicans would block the DOMA repeal.

“We know Republicans won’t let us get on the floor anyway,” he said. “It’s not a Democratic problem, it’s a Republican problem.”

Attorney General Eric Holder sent a letter to House Republicans last year stating that he and the president had concluded “classifications based on sexual orientation” as applied to same-sex couples under DOMA are unconstitutional.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has also expressed support for having a plank legalizing gay marriage in the party’s platform.