Jeb Bush stood by his opposition to same-sex marriage in a new interview, saying he doesn’t believe it’s a constitutional right and that traditional marriage is central to Catholicism.
“It’s at the core of the Catholic faith, and to imagine how we are going to succeed in our country unless we have committed family life, a child-centered family system, is hard to imagine,” he said on Christian Broadcasting Network’s “The Brody File.”
“So, irrespective of the Supreme Court ruling — because they are going to decide whatever they decide, and I don’t know what they’re going to do — we need to be stalwart supporters of traditional marriage.”
The Supreme Court is expected to rule next month on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage, and many observers — even opponents of gay marriage — believe the court will in some way expand marriage rights to gay men and lesbians. Many in the GOP are split over how to tackle such a ruling, as Evangelical Christians make up a significant subset of the GOP base and are adamantly opposed to gay marriage.
Those Evangelical Christians remain some of Bush’s biggest skeptics as he moves towards a presidential run.
Bush didn’t offer his own prescription for how to respond to the decision, but he again reaffirmed that he doesn’t believe same-sex marriage is a constitutional right — “but I’m not a lawyer, and clearly this has been accelerated at a warp pace.”
The expected presidential contender then took aim at his likely Democratic opponent in the race, Hillary Clinton, who surprised many in recently calling for the Supreme Court to back gay marriage, a shift from just two years prior when she said marriage was a matter best left to the states.
“What’s interesting is that four years ago Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had the same view that I just expressed to you. It’s thousands of years of culture and history is just being changed at warp speed. It’s hard to fathom why it is this way,” Bush said.