We do not recommend the tint picked by Bobby Jindal, who just tripled down on his opposition to gay marriage while casting big business — corporate America — as a principal enemy of righteousness on this front. Earth to Bobby!?! We are big business. Big business is our cuddling partner. We spoon with it. We do not vilify it. Bobby is a desperate man, trying to find a point of entry into a crowded primary field with no room for him. Tune him out, and do not, under any circumstances, follow his lead.

Better to mimic Chris Christie. He’s been dealing with this issue longer than most, because they love the gays in New Jersey. And he has mastered the roll-over-and-play-dead approach, wanly voicing personal qualms about gay marriage while stating on occasion that such resistance is futile. He does pro-gay stuff around the edges of same-sex marriage, so that his message to the gays is this: no filet mignon for you, but how about some tasty veggie and starch sides? I can offer you a crackdown on bullying. Watch me sign a ban on conversion therapy.

YOU can also learn from Marco Rubio, a portrait of the candidate as contortionist. He has said, defiantly, that “supporting the definition of marriage as one man and one woman is not anti-gay, it is pro-traditional marriage.” But he has also said, more recently, that he’d go to a friend’s gay wedding in a festive heartbeat, and that he sees homosexuality as ingrained in most cases, not a choice. By asserting that states should ultimately decide on gay marriage, he has elevated local control above personal conviction and thus surrendered to gay nuptials — sort of — without actually signing off on them. This particular fudge will become more difficult if the Supreme Court makes same-sex marriage the law of the entire land, but Marco has a better chance of squaring that circle than Rand Paul does.

Rand speaks in riddles. Prompt him with “gay marriage” and he muses on “the neutrality of the law that allows people to have contracts with another.” This was on CNN just two weeks ago. We still haven’t figured out if he was referring to the sale of a used Volvo or the consecration of love.

Jeb Bush’s tack is more comprehensible. He utters much of what religious conservatives want to hear. But he also brings enough gays or Republicans who support same-sex marriage into his campaign to give Americans a signal of where so many of us in the party really are. We have gay children, grandchildren, siblings, nieces, nephews, colleagues, bosses, employees. We want the world for them and a world that’s fully open to them.

But we also want to win elections, and our coalition is what it is. So we frequently take stands and mutter sentiments that leave them on the side of the road to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Politics is unforgiving that way. And this pink triangulation is a messy, ugly geometry.