The Nation - Democrats get quizzed on gay rights - Front-runner candidates don't budge on marriage issue in televised forum.

Six candidates -- including the front-runner, New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton; and her closest challengers, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards -- participated. All were jockeying to firm up support among gay and lesbian voters, one of the party's more active and reliable voting blocs.

One candidate, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, got caught up in the most tense moment of the evening when he was asked whether he believes people are born gay or whether it is a choice.

"It's a choice," he said.

When pressed, the governor stumbled over his words but didn't clearly change his answer, offering only, "I'm not a scientist. I don't see this as an issue of science or definition. I see gays and lesbians as people as a matter of human decency."

Richardson released a statement moments after the event, saying that he had misunderstood the question and that he does not believe people choose to be gay.

Throughout the two-hour event, sponsored by Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights group, the candidates at turns spoke confidently but also stepped gingerly around the edges of charged topics such as same-sex marriage.

Unlike the testy attacks and sniping that marked the Democratic forum in Chicago earlier in the week, Thursday's encounter was decidedly more civil, with candidates appearing one at a time for about 20 minutes to answer questions from a panel that included singer Melissa Etheridge, who is a lesbian.

The forum was staged before about 200 invited guests at a small Hollywood studio and televised live on Logo, a cable and satellite network aimed at gays and lesbians.

The panelists tried to draw out Clinton, Obama, Edwards and Richardson on their opposition to expanding the definition of marriage to include same-sex couples.

None of them budged, all saying instead that they think gays and lesbians should be afforded the rights of married couples through civil unions.

"It's not for me to suggest that you shouldn't be troubled by these issues," Obama said when a panelist asked if he could understand why gays would see that stance as unfair and unequal. "I understand that, and I'm sympathetic to it. But my job as president is going to be to make sure that the legal rights that have consequences on a day-to-day basis for loving, same-sex couples all across the country, that those are recognized and enforced."