How will Bernie represent young straight white men of Christian heritage?

[Onlooker]

45. Actually he did oppose marriage equality ...

... but did his best to keep quiet about it. When pressed, he was not for gay marriage. That doesn't make his views worse than Hillary's, since it took Hillary longer than Bernie to come around, but Sanders was irrelevant in the struggle for gay rights. I don't speak for the gay community, but being gay and being an adult during the Reagan and Clinton era, I remember it well. There's a reason that gay groups back the Clintons; there's a reason she leads among gays.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/bernie-sanders-gay-marriage_us_569fcc4de4b0a7026bf9e06f

Sanders did support civil unions as far back as 15 years ago, but it was for the same reason he opposed the federal Defense of Marriage Act in 1996: his strong belief in state’s rights. He wasn’t advocating for legal marriage for same-sex couples. He actually avoided the subject.

As one Vermont columnist put it in 2000, getting a straight answer from Sanders on gay marriage “was like pulling teeth... from a rhinoceros.” In 2006, Sanders said he supported civil unions but not same-sex marriage, again deferring to states.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2015/10/05/bernie_sanders_on_marriage_equality_he_s_no_longtime_champion.html

Ten years later, Sanders took a similarly cautious approach to same-sex marriage. In 2006, he took a stand against same-sex marriage in Vermont, stating that he instead endorsed civil unions. Sanders told the Associated Press that he was “comfortable” with civil unions, not full marriage equality. (To justify his stance, Sanders complained that a battle for same-sex marriage would be too “divisive.”)