Andy Borowitz has a funny piece here about Senator Portman's decision to change his stance on Gay Marriage. I'll quote just the first part here…
The decision of Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) to support same-sex marriage after learning that his son was gay has inspired hundreds of other Republican lawmakers to stop speaking to their children immediately, G.O.P. leaders confirmed today.
"I have gathered my caucus and told them, if your kids are going to tell you something that's going to cost you the next election, it's better to nip that situation in the bud," said House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio). "Just stop talking to them altogether, for heaven's sakes."
As I've said, I suspect Portman's change-o'-heart is self-serving and predicated on the assumption, "Hey, if it didn't hurt Cheney with the extreme right, it won't hurt me." But they're attacking him anyway, sometimes with inanities like, "If his son revealed he was in favor of drunk driving, would he now support drunk driving?" Even leaving out the fact that drunk driving is more of a choice (and a lot more possible to stop) than being gay, the folks making that counter-argument are willfuly missing the point.
Taken at face value, Portman's position is simple. Once he learned his kid was gay, he came to have a deeper understanding of gay people and to appreciate the awkward, inhuman position that those who oppose Gay Rights, such as himself, were putting them in. That understanding led him to rethink and change his position. A deeper understanding of drunk drivers might also be nice for someone who makes laws about them but it might not lead to the same conclusion since they're not the same thing.
One of the reasons some folks oppose Gay Rights is that they really don't know many or even any gay people. The ones who think you can "pray the gay away" or that we can legislate them into (a) heterosexuality and happy, child-bearing relationships or (b) simply disappearing are folks who really don't know gay people.