May 2, 2009 8:54AM # Marion Barry, Defender of Marriage By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE Former District of Columbia mayor and current councilman [Marion Barry](http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Barry-religious-leaders-protest-gay-marriage-measure-43912357.html) > told church leaders and other opponents of gay marriage Tuesday that he opposed the city council’s decision to recognize same-sex marriages performed outside the District. > > > Calling himself “a politician who is moral,” Barry said he would have voted against the measure if he had been present at the April 6 session. As a service to our beyond-the-Beltway readers, we should note that [Barry](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Barry) is a career politician with 29 years on the public payroll (not counting six months in jail); four wives, one of whom went to jail for embezzling from the federally funded “jobs program” they co-founded; countless extramarital relationships, many of them [consensual](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/longterm/library/dc/barry/shell.htm); a federal conviction for crack use while mayor; eight years of unpaid taxes; and a virtually unbroken trail of [graft and scandal](http://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/28/us/capital-s-mayor-grapples-with-graft-inquiry.html?n=Top/Reference/Times%20Topics/Subjects/R/Racketeering%20and%20Racketeers) in his four terms as mayor. You wonder what the politicians who are not moral are like. ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).