GOP’s Rob Portman Favors Gay Marriage, Now That Son Is Gay

If you’re in favor of gay rights, is is pretty much good news. Republican Rob Portman has shifted his stance on gay marriage after discovering his son is gay:

That isn’t how I’ve always felt. As a congressman, and more recently as a senator, I opposed marriage for same-sex couples. Then something happened that led me to think through my position in a much deeper way.

Two years ago, my son Will, then a college freshman, told my wife, Jane, and me that he is gay. He said he’d known for some time, and that his sexual orientation wasn’t something he chose; it was simply a part of who he is. Jane and I were proud of him for his honesty and courage. We were surprised to learn he is gay but knew he was still the same person he’d always been. The only difference was that now we had a more complete picture of the son we love.

I wrestled with how to reconcile my Christian faith with my desire for Will to have the same opportunities to pursue happiness and fulfillment as his brother and sister. Ultimately, it came down to the Bible’s overarching themes of love and compassion and my belief that we are all children of God.

That’s nice. But this would be nice too:

Glad Rob Portman’s for marriage equality, but wish conservatives could muster empathy for problems that don’t directly affect their family.

— Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 15, 2013

More humane than Portman locking his son out of his life, as was probably a possibility a decade or two back, but yeah.