GOP hopefuls hope SCOTUS legalizes gay marriage

How times have changed.

The Republican national platform still opposes same-sex marriage.  Yet, there has been a tsunami of a change in public opinion, as well as the fact that 70% of Americans now live in a state where it is legal -- and the sky has not fallen, Armageddon has not come, and children have not been recruited to the "homosexual life style."   Heterosexual marriage continues in its same, rather sad state -- no better, no worse -- as a result of the changed laws.

Republicans have a huge political problem here, going into the 2016 campaign.

UNLESS . . . . SCOTUS takes it off the table.   And that's what they're hoping.

Here's how New York Times writers Jeremy W. Peters and Jonathan Martin put it:

"If the high court resolves the issue as expected in June, it could deliver a decision that has the benefit of largely neutralizing a debate that a majority of Americans believe Republicans are on the wrong side of — and well ahead of the party’s 2016 presidential primaries.

"To have the question disposed of and dispensed with, many Republicans say, could make their opinions on the matter largely moot, providing a political escape hatch that gives them an excuse to essentially say: 'It’s been settled. Let’s move on.'"

Are we saying that they would rather give up than fight?   On this issue, yes.   All the court challenges have exhausted any plausible reason for opposing marriage equality, so they are looking for a way out of the corner they've painted themselves into.

In the end, perhaps it was more of a political wedge issue than a principled concern.   Now it has become a big political liability, as nearly 60% of voters approve and the evidence mounts that there are no bad consequences.   Yet their conservative base would never allow them simply to change the platform.

More important even than that, however, is the snowball effect.   As more same-sex couples are allowed to marry, more people now know someone personally who is married to a same-sex person.   Hearing their stories, as well as those in the news, changes attitudes.

It's exhilarating to me, who never thought it would happen in my life-time, to witness conservatives wanting it to happen . . . and quickly.   Even if their motive is simply to avoid a fight they can only lose, maybe they'll also learn something.  Maybe some of them have a brother, niece, staff member who has gotten married -- and they have genuinely evolved but were still stuck with the old platform opposition.    The relief may be personal, as well as political.

Ralph