RNC Convention Star Clint Eastwood Reaffirms Support For Marriage Equality

Actor/director Clint Eastwood, whose controversial “surprise” Republican National Convention conversation with an empty stool ranked as the convention’s highlight for a plurality of viewers, reiterated his support for marriage equality Monday. On Ellen, he told host Ellen DeGeneres that he does not share Mitt Romney’s anti-LGBT views:

DeGENERES: I like — you have, your stance on gay marriage is you don’t have any problem with that, which I greatly…
EASTWOOD: It’s part of the libertarian idea: leave everybody alone.

Eastwood notes that in the face of the struggling economy, there is “a lot to think about” more important than worrying about whether same-sex couples are marrying.

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Eastwood has previously expressed this inclusive view. He told GQ magazine in 2011, “I don’t give a fuck about who wants to get married to anybody else! Why not?! We’re making a big deal out of things we shouldn’t be making a deal out of…Just give everybody the chance to have the life they want.”

His favored candidate, Romney, however takes a starkly opposite view on the subject and has signed a pledge promising to support a federal marriage inequality constitutional amendment. The Republican party’s platform, adopted at the same convention, includes an anti-LGBT plank, stating “we believe that marriage, the union of one man and one woman must be upheld as the national standard, a goal to stand for, encourage, and promote through laws governing marriage.”