PORTMAN CLAIMS THE SELF-INTEREST EXEMPTION

So I guess this is what we're all talking about this morning:

Sen. Rob Portman has renounced his opposition to gay marriage, telling reporters from Ohio newspapers yesterday that he changed his position after his son Will told him and his wife, Jane, that he is gay.

Portman, an Ohio Republican, made the stunning revelation just a week before the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments on a 1996 federal law asserting that gay marriage is not legal, a measure that Portman co-sponsored as a member of the U.S. House.

But like former President Bill Clinton, who signed the law, Portman now wants Congress to invalidate the law’s declaration that marriage is between a man and a woman. Instead, Portman said he would prefer that it be left to the states to decide the definition of marriage.

Well, it's good -- though let's acknowledge that Portman is claiming the self-interest exemption to right-wing orthodoxy, which is always allowed.

I'll quote what I wrote last April, when Marco Rubio came out in favor of a lite version of the DREAM Act:

Republicans want their politicians to be hardcore, but if you're a GOP pol, you get a pass on certain issues if they affect a group of which you're a member. That's why John McCain, a torture victim, was able to get away with saying that waterboarding is torture. That's why Dick Cheney, father of a lesbian, was able to get away with positive words about gay marriage. That's why, more recently, the usually extremely hardcore congressman Allen West, an African-American, was able to get away with expressing outrage at the death of Trayvon Martin.

These carve-outs for Republicans basically track with right-wing thinking about empathy: If an issue doesn't affect you personally, or an affinity group of yours, why should you give a crap about how it affects other people?

So Rubio, as a Hispanic, can support a version of the DREAM Act. But the vast majority of the party, and especially the crazy base, is no more likely to go along with him than it is to go along with McCain on torture or Cheney on gay marriage.

If current officeholders in the GOP start declaring their support for marriage equality just because they think it's the right thing to do, then I'll be really impressed.