Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley was confident that the state’s same-sex marriage bill would eventually pass the Senate and be on his desk for signature according to an interview the governor hosted at SiriusXM Radio show OutQ on Wednesday, just one day shy of its victory win.
“I believed that in my short service to the people of this state that the consensus point on this issue could only be reached around civil unions,” O’Malley said. “I was wrong. It became possible to reach a consensus on marriage equality.”
“There’s been an evolution in the broadest sense among the people of our state,” he continued. “Initially, when this issue first became very visible, after Mayor Gavin Newsom conducted marriages in San Francisco [in 2004], I think initially a lot of people had a lot of fear — and a lot of misplaced fear — and over time I think people have come to realize that the way forward, among people of many different faiths, is always through the greater and broader respect for equal rights for all.”
Radio hosts asked O’Malley if former Vice President Dick Cheney was indeed lobbying in the state for same-sex marriage rights. The Maryland governor explained, “I welcome bipartisan cooperation wherever it happens. There were lots of people making lots of calls and I think that’s a good and healthy thing. There’s not a family among us that doesn’t have a friend or a relative who is gay. All of those stories come together around this issue and it transcends party.”
O’Malley added: “I encouraged people to look at it through the eyes of children of gay and lesbian couples. And it is not right, and it is not just, that children of gay and lesbian parents should have lesser protections. It was about equal rights for all.”
The full transcript of the radio show is available on Huffington Post.
