Gay rights activists march on Washington, October 11, 2009. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Hillary Clinton, who was the first lady of the United States when President Bill Clinton signed the "Defense of Marriage Act," has recorded a warm and thoughtful endorsement of marriage equality. With the release Monday of her statement, the Democratic Party is completing an evolution on the issue of same-sex marriage. Never again will a serious contender for the party's presidential nomination -- whether Clinton runs in 2016 or not -- oppose the right of lesbian couples and gay couples to marry.
But the Democratic Party is not alone in evolving.
Republicans are moving more slowly on the issue. But they are moving. And in many senses this movement provides the most dramatic evidence of the rapid progress being made by proponents of LGBT rights.
When Ohio Senator Rob Portman announced last week that he is now a supporter of marriage equality, he became the latest prominent Republican to abandon the official position of a party that just a few years ago was rigidly -- and almost universally -- opposed to same-sex marriage.
"I have come to believe that if two people are prepared to make a lifetime commitment to love and care for each other in good times and in bad, the government shouldn't deny them the opportunity to get married," said the Ohio senator, who was high on Mitt Romney's list of vice presidential prospects.
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The senator was inspired to abandon his embrace of discrimination at least in part because his son is gay. Other Republicans have been influenced by family connections and friendships. And still others are shifting their stances because they know the Republican Party needs to change.
The Grand Old Party is in a process of transformation that is notable in its scope and character. Less than a decade ago, when states were voting to amend constitutions to formally bar same-sex couples from marrying, leading Republicans were overwhelmingly supportive of discrimination. Now, a growing number of leading Republicans are explicitly rejecting discrimination and taking the position that a new Washington Post/ABC News Poll says 58 percent of all Americans now embrace: "It should be legal for gay and lesbian couples to get married."
A 2012 presidential contender who was among the top finishers in the New Hampshire primary, former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, says: "There is nothing conservative about denying other Americans the ability to forge that same relationship with the person they love."
Huntsman is sometimes accused of harboring moderate tendencies. But no one would dare call former Vice President Dick Cheney anything but a conservative, and Cheney says: "I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish." Cheney has reportedly joined former Republican National Committeeman Ken Mehlman in lobbying Republican legislators around the country to support marriage-equality measures such as the one that was enacted in 2012 in Maryland.
It is true that Cheney's daughter is an out lesbian, and Mehlman's son is an out gay man. But Americans of all partisan and ideological backgrounds have come to support LGBT rights because of personal connections and experiences. That does not detract from the significance of their commitment to marriage equality. As Cheney says with regard to his support for same-sex unions: "Freedom means freedom for everyone."
There are plenty of Republicans, plenty of conservative Republicans, who are coming out for marriage equality on principle. Republicans like former United Nations ambassador John Bolton and former Solicitor General Ted Olson. "We're talking about an effect upon millions of people and the way they live their everyday life and the way they're treated in their neighborhood, in their schools, in their jobs," says Olson. "If you are a conservative, how could you be against a relationship in which people who love one another want to publicly state their vows... and engage in a household in which they are committed to one another and become part of the community and accepted like other people?"
Olson is one of the lawyers aiding the suit that seeks to overturn California's Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage, along with discriminatory laws in other states.
More than 80 prominent conservatives -- including former GOP cabinet members and presidential aides, ex-governors and sitting members of Congress -- have signed a legal brief arguing that lesbians and gays have a constitutional right to marry.
Of course, there are still throwbacks in the GOP. At the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend, Florida Senator Marco Rubio drew cheers when he declared to the cardinals, "Just because I believe that states should have the right to define marriage in a traditional way does not make me a bigot."
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