Thompson: Let states decide on gay marriages

ByABC News
September 8, 2007, 4:34 AM

SIOUX CITY, Iowa -- Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson, campaigning Friday in Iowa's socially conservative northwest, stopped short of supporting a constitutional amendment explicitly banning gay marriage.

His stance puts him at odds with many in the GOP base in Iowa, where the caucuses launch the 2008 nominating season.

Instead, Thompson said the alternative measure he supports would effectively outlaw same-sex marriage without imposing a federal mandate on states.

"I do not think one-size-fits-all, national, federal solutions absolving the states of their responsibilities for good laws too is the way to go," the former Tennessee senator told reporters on his campaign bus after a stop in Le Mars.

Thompson was on his second day of campaigning in Iowa, having launched his campaign from Des Moines and headlined a rally in Council Bluffs Thursday. The familiar television actor, lawyer and former lobbyist spent the day traveling through the most strongly Republican part of Iowa on Friday, and was scheduled to headline events in Cedar Rapids and Davenport on Saturday.

Thompson was asked during a campaign stop in Sioux City if he supported a federal ban on gay marriage, which most but not all of the candidates seeking the 2008 GOP nomination support.

He responded by suggesting the U.S. Constitution be amended to bar court decisions in one state on gay marriage from being recognized in another. The provision is part of the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act, which Thompson voted for in the Senate.

Giving a Sioux City audience of about 250 a first glimpse of his positions on key issues, Thompson also said he would include in a constitutional amendment prohibitions on a judge's authority to declaring gay marriage legal without legislative approval.

"What we're seeing here is a totally judicially created problem," Thompson told an audience of roughly 250, mostly Republican activists from northwest Iowa, during a 30-minute event at the Sioux City Convention Center.

"My approach would attack the problem where the problem is, the judiciary," Thompson later told reporters.