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| FILE - In this May 11, 2010 file photo, Kay Hagan, D-N.C. speaks at a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington. For years, American opinion on gay marriage has been shifting. Now Washington is tripping over itself trying to catch up. In less than two weeks, seven sitting senators _ all from moderate or Republican-leaning states _ announced their support, dropping one by one like dominos. Taken together, their proclamations reflected a profound change in the American political calculus: For the first time, elected officials from traditionally conservative states are starting to feel it's safer to back gay marriage than risk being the last to join the cause. |
WASHINGTON
(AP) -- For years, American opinion on gay marriage has been shifting.
Now lawmakers are in a mad dash to catch up.
In
less than two weeks, seven senators - all from moderate or
Republican-leaning states - announced their support, dropping one by one
like dominos. Taken together, their proclamations reflected a profound
change in the American political calculus: For the first time, elected
officials from traditionally conservative states are starting to feel
it's safer to back gay marriage than risk being the last to join the
cause.
"As far as I can tell, political
leaders are falling all over themselves to endorse your side of the
case," Chief Justice John Roberts told lawyers urging the Supreme Court
on Wednesday to strike down a law barring legally married gay couples
from receiving federal benefits or recognition.
It
was the second of two landmark gay marriage cases the justices heard
this week, the high court's first major examination of gay rights in a
decade. But the focus on the court cases - replete with colorful,
camera-ready protests outside the court building - obscured the sudden
emergence of a critical mass across the street in the Capitol as one by
one, senators took to Facebook or quietly issued a statement to say that
they, too, now support gay marriage.
For some
Democrats, like Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill and Montana Sen. Jon
Tester, the reversal would have been almost unfathomable just a few
months ago as they fought for re-election. The potential risks were even
greater for other Democrats like North Carolina Sen. Kay Hagan and
Alaska Sen. Mark Begich, already top GOP targets when they face voters
next year in states that President Barack Obama lost in November. After
all, it was less than a year ago that voters in Hagan's state approved a
ban on gay marriage.
Those four Democrats and
two others - Mark Warner of Virginia and Jay Rockefeller of West
Virginia - were swept up in a shifting tide that began to take shape
last year, when Obama, in the heat of his re-election campaign, became
the first sitting president to endorse gay marriage. Former Secretary of
State Hillary Rodham Clinton, a potential contender in the next
presidential election, followed suit in mid-March. As support among
party leaders builds, rank-and-file Democrats appear wary of being
perceived as hold-outs in what both parties are increasingly describing
as a civil-rights issue.
"They're reflecting
what they're seeing in the polls - except the most extreme of the
Republican base," former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, a
Republican who supports gay marriage, said in an interview. "From a
purely political perspective, if you want to be a leader of the future,
you look at the next generation. They are overwhelmingly in favor of
this."
Reince Priebus, the chairman of the
Republican Party, cautioned in a USA Today interview that the GOP should
not "act like Old Testament heretics."
Among
Republicans, whose party platform opposes gay marriage, the shift in
position has mostly been limited to former lawmakers and prominent
strategists. Still, a distinct change in tone was palpable this month
when Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican whom presidential candidate
Mitt Romney vetted last year as a potential running mate, declared his
support, citing a personal conversion stemming from his son coming out
to him as gay.
Rather than blast Portman for
flouting party dogma or failing an ideological litmus test, Republican
leaders shrugged, indicating that even if Republicans, as a party,
aren't prepared back gay marriage, they won't hold it against those in
their ranks who do.
In the
Republican-controlled House, where most members come from lopsided
districts heavily skewed to one party or the other, GOP leaders are not
wavering publicly from their staunch opposition. In fact, when the Obama
administration stopped defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court,
it was House Republicans who took up the mantle. Democrats said Thursday
that Republicans have spent as much as $3 million in taxpayer funds to
defend the law, now before the Supreme Court.
"It's
like immigration. The party realizes they are on the losing side of
some of these issues," said former Rep. Jim Kolbe, an Arizona
Republican. Kolbe came out as gay in 1996 while in office and will mark
another milestone in May when he and his longtime partner get married in
Washington.
"They want to make the shift, but
you have got to do it in a politic and strategic way," Kolbe said.
"It's a matter of how and when you take down one flag and run up the
other."
Kolbe and Whitman joined dozens of
other prominent Republicans in signing a friend-of-the-court brief
urging the Supreme Court to strike down the law barring federal
recognition of gay marriages. But with House Speaker John Boehner,
R-Ohio, still defending the law and social conservative groups vowing
payback for those who abandon it, prospects are slim that Congress will
move any time soon to repeal it on its own.
"It's
sort of a bandwagon effect among the cultural elite," said Peter Sprigg
of the Family Research Council, which opposes gay marriage. "Some of
these politicians who have changed their position, those who live in
more conservative states, may pay for that shift with a defeat in their
next election."
If public opinion continues to
move in the direction it has been for the last 15 years, what's true
for the next election may not be true just a few years down the line -
even for Republicans.
When Gallup first asked
in polls about gay marriages, in 1996, just 27 percent felt they should
be valid. That figure climbed to 44 percent two years ago, and reached a
majority by last November, when 53 percent said gay marriages should be
recognized. Among independents, a key barometer for politicians,
support has jumped 23 points to 55 percent, including a six-point gain
since 2010.
Even among Republicans, support
has grown by 14 percentage points since 1996, although there's been no
significant movement among Republicans since 2010, when 28 percent
backed legal marriage.
"A lot of Republicans
have come to the conclusion we can't live one life in private but
advocate another life in public," said Republican strategist Alex
Castellanos. "We all know families who are loving parents of the same
gender who are raising great kids."
