Photo by qbubbles

At the National Governors Association meeting in Salt Lake City on Friday, Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said he is leaning toward sponsoring a bill next year to allow same-sex marriage in Maryland.

Earlier this week, the Washington Post reported that O’Malley had been weighing whether to sponsor a same-sex marriage bill during next year’s legislative session.

O’Malley had expressed support for a same-sex marriage bill that fell short in March, but the pressure has been on since New York embraced same-sex marriage in June.

“I think we can learn from what they did,” O’Malley said of the legislation that passed in New York. “One of the things we’re looking at in the drafting is how their clauses with regard to religious freedom were different from ours. That might improve our efforts. And I certainly plan to be very active in support of it, and we’ll have other announcements in upcoming months.”