For Obama and Clinton, twisty paths to 'yes' on gay marriage

WASHINGTON (AP) — When President Barack Obama praised the Supreme Court's watershed same-sex marriage ruling, he held it up as evidence that a "shift in hearts and minds is possible."

Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign jumped on the Supreme Court decision, changing its red campaign logo to a rainbow colored H, releasing a gauzy video of gay wedding ceremonies, and blasting out supportive tweets aimed at building its campaign list.

[...] like Obama, such expressions of support mark a remarkable shift for Clinton, who opposed gay marriage for more than two decades as a first lady, a U.S. senator and a presidential candidate.

During his 1996 Illinois state Senate race, he replied to a questionnaire from a gay newspaper in Chicago: "I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages."

[...] earlier this year, his former top strategist, David Axelrod, wrote that Obama had feigned opposition to gay marriage for most of his political career, grudgingly taking Axelrod's advice that African-American religious leaders and others would oppose him if he let it be known he supported gay marriage.

Obama disputed the account, telling BuzzFeed News that he thought civil unions were "a sufficient way of squaring the circle," but that "the pain and the sense of stigma that was being placed on same-sex couples who are friends of mine" changed his mind.