NEW YORK - January 23 - As the country awaits state high court decisions in marriage cases brought by couples in Connecticut, California, and Iowa; the New Jersey legislature prepares to deal with the reality that civil unions don't work; and the 11th Annual Freedom to Marry Week (Feb. 10-16) approaches, Nobel Laureate Al Gore has added his voice in support of ending same-sex couples' exclusion from marriage. 

In a personal video posted on Current TV January 17, shortly before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Al Gore spoke out in favor of the freedom to marry.  The former vice president stated: “I think that gay men and women ought to have the same rights as heterosexual men and women, to make contracts, to have hospital visiting rights, to join together in marriage, and I don’t understand why it is considered by some people to be a threat to heterosexual marriage to allow it by gays and lesbians.”
 
In response to Gore’s unequivocal and heartfelt statement making the case for marriage equality, Evan Wolfson, founder of Freedom to Marry and author of Why Marriage Matters: America, Equality, and Gay People's Right to Marry (Simon & Schuster 2004), said, "Al Gore, a true world leader, explains it perfectly.  The freedom to marry is about protecting all families and promoting loyalty and love and commitment. As on so many crucial questions, Gore gets it right, and shows what leadership really means."

View Al Gore’s video with transcript on Freedom to Marry’s website.

Freedom to Marry is the gay and non-gay partnership working to win marriage equality nationwide. Launched in 2003, Freedom to Marry is headed by Evan Wolfson, nationally recognized as a central "architect of the marriage equality movement." Freedom to Marry guides and focuses this social justice movement on a nationwide level, serving as a strategy and support center for national, state, and local partners, a catalyst that drives and shapes the national debate on marriage equality, and an alliance-builder fostering support from non-gay allies.

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