Change of heart: Kevin Rudd changes his stance on gay marriage. Photo: Lee Griffith Kevin Rudd has endorsed gay marriage, changing his position on the issue. "The secular Australian state should be able to recognise same sex marriage," Mr Rudd wrote in a blog post on Monday night. This change in position has come about as a result of a lot of reflection, over a long period of time, including conversations with good people grappling with deep questions of life, sexuality and faith. The former Prime Minister, who only last September voted against legalising same sex marriage in a parliamentary vote that lost 98-42, said his change of thinking had been precipitated by a recent conversation with a friend and former colleague, who came out as gay. He then tells me that one day he'd like to get married to another bloke. And by the way, "had my views on same sex marriage changed?,"" Mr Rudd wrote. Mr Rudd said that his long-held opposition to gay marriage had made him "the last of the Mohicans" in his family. His last remaining concern on the issue was the welfare of children raised in gay families. In explaining his change of mind, Mr Rudd pointed to the large number of heterosexual marriages that end in divorce and academic research that showed children raised by same-sex parents are not developmentally compromised. "Finally," he wrote, "as someone who was raised for the most important part of his childhood by a single mum, I don't buy the argument that I was somehow developmentally challenged because I didn't happen to have a father." The loving nurture of children is a more complex business than that. He called on the Coalition to follow Labor's lead and allow a conscience vote on the issue. But the former Labor leader, who declined to run against the Prime Minister in an abortive leadership spill in March, said he was not seeking a leadership role in the national debate on same-sex marriage. Instead, he said he was writing to make clear his change of position to his local constituents.