Charlie Crist, rumored to be running as a Democrat for Florida governor,
has come out in favor of gay marriage.
"I most certainly support marriage equality in Florida and look forward to the
day it happens here," Crist quietly announced Wednesday night on his Facebook
page, hours after Delaware became the 11th state to legalize gay marriage.
Crist, formerly a Republican governor, apparently has evolved since the last
time he ran for public office in 2010. During the GOP primary campaign against
Marco Rubio for U.S. Senate, Crist told CNN he supported a constitutional ban
against marriage equality.
"I feel that marriage is a sacred institution, if you will. But I do believe in
tolerance. I'm a live-and-let-live kind of guy, and while I feel that way about
marriage, I think if partners want to have the opportunity to live together, I
don't have a problem with that," Crist said at the time, adding that when it
comes "to the institution of marriage, I believe that it is between a man and a
woman. It's just how I feel."
Wednesday afternoon, Crist met in a Biscayne Boulevard restaurant with Miami
mortgage broker Joseph Falk, a public policy advisor at the Akerman Senterfitt
law firm and former board chairman of SAVE Dade, the county's largest gay-rights
group.
"We discussed a great number of topics, one of which, of course, was the issue
of marriage equality," said Falk, a national Democratic Party fundraiser and
activist. "He listened to some of the topics, and he did not tell me that he was
going to go on Facebook later that night and announce his decision to support
marriage equality."
Falk said Crist said little about the issue at lunch, before the former governor
returned to Tampa.
"We talked and he said, "I'm already there,' " Falk recalled. "I did not press
him, nor question or give him advice on whether it was the appropriate time to
make any kind of formal announcement. But I did say this was important to a
large constituency group here in Florida."
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