Former President Jimmy Carter says same-sex marriage should be left for states to decide and not imposed by the federal government.
"I'm kind of inclined to let the states decide individually," Carter told WFAA-TV in Dallas-Fort Worth in an interview aired Sunday.
"As you see, more and more states are deciding on gay marriage every year. If Texas doesn't want to have gay marriage, then I think that's a right for Texas people to decide," Carter said.
The former president seems to have changed his position since 2013, when he said in a CNN interview that he favors gay marriage across the country.
"I don't think that the government ought to ever have the right to tell a church to marry people if the church doesn't want to," Carter said on Sunday. "I'm a Baptist, and the congregation of our church will decide whether we have a man or a woman as pastor, and whether we'll marry gay people or not."
Same-sex marriage currently is legal in 32 states. Texas' state amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge earlier this year and is on appeal.
The U.S. Supreme Court has not taken any same-sex marriage cases. Earlier this month, the court declined to hear appeals from five states, effectively declaring same-sex marriage legal there.
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