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Despite Republican Sen. Rob Portman endorsing gay rights Friday, the party is a long way from following him. But a shift in society could make the GOP temper is message.

As the Republican Party looks in the mirror in the wake of losing the presidential election last year, its assessment includes what to do about gay marriage, an issue the party has traditionally been against.

That might be changing somewhat. One of their own, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, is pushing the issue to the fore, becoming the highest-profile GOP lawmaker to lend support to gay marriage while in office.

His reversal on the issue Friday is significant considering he is one of the original backers of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in the 1990s and a constitutional amendment to define marriage as between one man and one woman in 2004.

DOMA is under review this month by the US Supreme Court. Senator Portman says that gay marriage should be an issue for states to decide and that federal law should not prohibit gay couples from receiving the same federal benefits that heterosexual married couples enjoy.
More at http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2013/0316/Rob-Portman-fallout-Ho
w-far-is-GOP-from-embracing-gay-rights-video?nav=87-frontpage-entryLeadStory

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CPAC conservative activists wrestle with same-sex marriage

He surely didn’t plan it this way, but the announcement by US Sen. Rob Portman (R) of Ohio that he now supports same-sex marriage highlighted the Conservative Political Action Conference’s difficulty with one of the most contentious political issues.

Some at the three-day CPAC meeting of conservative activists and prominent Republicans hit gay marriage head-on.

"Just because I believe that states should have the right to define marriage in a traditional way does not make me a bigot," US Sen. Marco Rubio (R) of Florida told a cheering crowd.

“We cannot hope to limit government if we do not stand up for our core civil society institutions, beginning with marriage,” said former Sen. Jim DeMint (R) of South Carolina, now president of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

"People can love whom they want and live the way they choose," Mr. DeMint said, "but no one is entitled to redefine a foundational institution of civil society that has existed for centuries."

“What we need is people standing up more than ever for marriage as between a man and a woman,” Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, told one panel discussion.

But another panel at the CPAC convention site – this one unofficial and titled “A Rainbow on the Right: Growing the coalition, bringing tolerance out of the closet” – heard a different message.

“As a society we should in some way encourage people to live in the institution of marriage when they can,” Jonah Goldberg, editor at large for the conservative National Review, told the group. “Besides, it’s a free society and they should be free to form whatever associations they want.”

CPAC organizers had excluded GOProud, the gay Republican group, and pointedly did not invite another gay group – Log Cabin Republicans – to take part in the three-day event.

Gregory Angelo, executive director of Log Cabin Republicans, acknowledges that “the American Conservative Union [which organizes CPAC] is free to do what it likes – as conservatives, we understand that is their right.”

But he points to a new poll showing that most Republicans under age 30 support same-sex marriage, even though the number for all Republicans still is much less than that.

In fact, as Maggie Haberman writes in Politico, “Same-sex marriage is no longer the winning issue it was for the GOP less than a decade ago, when George W. Bush was running for re-election and a generation of younger voters had not yet come of age.”

At CPAC, the RealClearPolitics online news organization interviewed young attendees about same-sex marriage.

“Gay marriage isn’t a big issue to me – I think it should be fine,” said Brian Devlin, 18. “Republicans are about government staying out and people having their own choices, and that’s why I’m pro-gay marriage.”

Megan O’Dean, 19, said she hopes other prominent Republicans follow Portman’s lead in supporting same-sex marriage.

“I feel like when people have issues with the Republican Party, that’s what they focus on – gay marriage and stuff like that,” she explained. “And it gives a negative view because there’s more to the Republican Party than that.”

In a Daily Caller column Friday Mr. Angelo of the Log Cabin Republicans warned that “if the ACU continues to pursue a mantra of exclusion and use CPAC to showcase individuals who believe gay conservatives have no business being a part of the greater conservative movement, they should know they do so at their own peril – and at the cost of alienating the next generation of American conservatives. http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2013/0316/CPAC-conservative-acti
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