Republican Rep. Paul Ryan has said he believes gay couples should be able to adopt children, USA Today reports.
The Wisconsin congressman voted in favor of banning same-sex couples in Washington, D.C., from adopting in 1999, but he says he changed his mind.
“I’d vote differently these days,” Ryan said at a town-hall-style meeting in Wisconsin on Monday.
“I do believe that if there are children who are orphans who do not have a loving person or couple … I think if a person wants to love and raise a child, they ought to be able to do that. Period. I would vote that way,” he says in a video on the liberal Think Progress website.
Mitt Romney’s 2012 running mate clarified that he still believes “marriage is between a man and a woman. We just respectfully disagree on the issue.”
Though Romney said he supported gay adoption during the campaign, this is the first time Ryan has spoken about his stance since the ’99 vote. Ryan said he changed his mind years ago.
Ryan also said he would vote in favor of the proposed Employment Non-Discrimination Act, “which would prohibit sexual-orientation discrimination in hiring and employment by civilian, non-religious employers with at least 15 employees,” according to Big News Network.
However, he added that he’d need to learn more about a transgender-inclusive version of the bill before deciding how to vote on that. President Barack Obama has said he supports passage of the bill.
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