Some of the most effective lobbyists on same-sex marriage don’t stalk the halls of Congress or pound the pavement on K Street: They’re the children of Republican politicians.

Through open and sometimes awkward conversations at home, these children say their parents’ views are changing, even if their public stances haven’t caught up to their private views.


“You can’t always come out and say how you really feel, especially in a GOP primary as it is today,” said MSNBC host Abby Huntsman. She suspects her father, former Utah governor and 2012 Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, supported gay marriage even before publicly backing it in a 2013 op-ed.

Older Republicans, by and large, continue to oppose gay marriage, only a handful of Republican lawmakers publicly favor it, and none of the party’s presidential candidates have said they do. But the majority of young Republicans, like the majority of Americans, now support it.

With the Supreme Court preparing to hear oral arguments on same-sex marriage on Tuesday, the issue has become a hot topic on the presidential campaign trail, putting Republican discomfort with the issue in stark relief. Texas Senator Ted Cruz put out a statement last week affirming his stance against gay marriage, after news reports emerged that he attended a reception for him hosted by two gay hoteliers. He reportedly said at the event that he would not love his daughters any differently if they were gay.

In interviews with POLITICO, the children of prominent Republican politicians say they’ve seen their own parents struggle with and evolve in their views of marriage equality.

In 2013, as Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake was considering a vote for the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would protect gay and transgender people, he posed a question to his son Ryan as the two sat in his Washington office. “Do you think homosexuality is a choice?” Flake asked, according to Ryan.

Ryan, whose best friend and cousin had just come out, sending “shockwaves” through their conservative Mormon family, told his dad no, not usually.

“He just sat there and pondered it for a while,” Ryan said. “That got to me. He was really trying to gather opinions.”

Later that year, Democrat Tammy Baldwin, the nation’s first openly gay senator, approached Flake to lobby his support for the bill. She asked Flake to speak with a conservative Republican lawmaker with a transgender child (that child is still a minor, and Ryan declined to share the lawmaker’s name). That conversation, Flake’s office confirmed, helped seal what the LGBT magazine the Advocate called his “surprise” vote in favor of the bill.

Since then, Ryan has become an increasingly avid advocate for gays and lesbians. Earlier this month, he marched in the Phoenix Pride parade. He’s joined pro-gay marriage Mormon groups and started volunteering at a shelter for LGBT youth. Ryan told his father that he thinks the young people he works with should be able to get married one day – and he describes his dad as a good listener.

“I’m not saying he supports marriage equality. I can’t say that. I just can’t comment on that,” said Ryan. “I do think his views have evolved. He’s in a place in Washington, D.C., where he’s had to deal with different people.”

He added, “Just as any other politician has to, there has to be a difference between private belief and what the majority may want.”

When asked about his current position on gay marriage, Jeff Flake said, through a spokeswoman, “This issue is now in the hands of the courts.”

Some of the pleas are more personal. Matt R. Salmon’s parents were once among the staunchest opponents of gay marriage. His father, Arizona Rep. Matt Salmon, voted for a ban on gay adoption and for the Defense of Marriage Act. His mother, Nancy, led a failed 2006 campaign to amend Arizona’s constitution to ban not only gay marriage, but legal recognition of any kind for same-sex couples.

MSNBC host Abby Huntsman said "you can’t always come out and say how you really feel, especially in a GOP primary as it is today." | Getty image

At the time, Matt was in “reparative therapy” to reverse the homosexuality that made him and his parents feel ashamed. In 2008, he quit the therapy and embraced his sexual identity, coming out to friends and on Facebook as gay.

His parents, he said, have come to embrace it, too. “If you want to know the truth, my father was the first to come around,” said Matt. “He’s been exposed to a lot more in his life, especially given his position. He’s been exposed to a lot more ideas that are different than his own.”

But in 2013, his father — who served in the House from 1995-2001 and returned to the chamber that year — said that despite his son’s identity, he continued to oppose gay marriage. But that’s not the full story, according to Matt. Later that year, as the two drove to a motorcycle expo in Scottsdale and discussed the media blow-up over the congressman’s comments, he confided in his son that he would happily attend his wedding, whenever that may be.

Since then, said Matt, his parents have come around further in accepting his sexual identity. “They’ve all only evolved more, to the point where they want to know about my dating life, where they want to know if anybody’s in my life making me happy.”

His boyfriends have been “welcomed with open arms” at family events, and his mother has told him she will not involve herself again in anti-gay marriage campaigns. Matt said that conservative congressmen have approached his dad to thank him – his relationship with his son had helped them change their own views on LGBT issues.

Matt said he’d love to go into the details of the conversations he’s had with his father on those issues but that he can’t. “There are opinions that my father privately holds that are different from his political positions that make them difficult to share."

“Privately, things have evolved,” Matt said of his father. “As far as I know, his political stances haven’t changed.”

“It’s a private matter between him and his son,” said a spokesman for the congressman.

Attitudes toward gay marriage have shifted rapidly in recent years. In 2004, as Massachusetts was sanctioning the nation’s first legal same-sex marriages, only 42 percent of Americans thought they should be valid, compared to 55 percent who thought they shouldn’t be, according to Gallup.

A decade later, those numbers had reversed. The speed with which gay marriage and its acceptance has grown has often left politicians playing catch-up with the public – at least in public. Not long ago, those politicians were Democrats. In his new memoir, David Axelrod writes that, as many suspected, President Obama supported gay marriage back in 2008 even as he said that he opposed it. The president only came out to the nation in favor of gay marriage in 2012, 16 years after state senate candidate Obama indicated his support for it on a questionnaire and long after his liberal base had embraced it.

As acceptance of gay marriage becomes more mainstream in the Republican Party, its leaders face a similar dilemma. Sixty-one percent of Republicans ages 18-29 favor gay marriage, compared to 22 percent of those age 65 and up. Within prominent Republican families, that divide means children – gay, transgender, and straight — are playing decisive roles in changing their parents’ views.

In March 2013, Sen. Rob Portman became the first Republican senator to announce his support for gay marriage, two years after his son Will came out to his parents as gay.

Last summer, a lesbian relative of Scott Walker’s wife married another woman, and Walker’s son Alex acted as a witness. The Wisconsin governor has said that both of his sons have pushed the view that government should have no hand in regulating marriage. “That’s a solid argument,” Walker told Buzzfeed in 2013. “I personally may not embrace that yet. But that, to me, is a bigger question… I get their concerns.”

Last month, Florida Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen was one of 300 Republicans to sign on to an amicus brief in support of gay marriage filed with the Supreme Court. She’s said her transgender son Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, who was born as a girl and came out to her parents as lesbian before identifying as a man, has influenced her views on gender and sexuality.

“One of the biggest ways that my sister and I influenced my mother’s views on LGBT issues was by simply speaking about them openly,” said Heng-Lehtinen. “Growing up, my sister Patty and I did not hide our LGBT friends nor shy away from discussing LGBT topics in the news. This was the case long before I came out as a transgender man.”

Earlier this month, Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson refused to sign a “religious freedom” bill that critics said would have permitted discrimination against gays, citing the influence of his son Seth, a liberal labor organizer in Texas, who emailed his father about his objections to the bill.

I didn’t really come up with any original arguments on it,” said Seth Hutchinson – a sign that the messenger often matters as much as the message.

Arizona Sen. John McCain, right, waves as his daughter, Meghan McCain, looks on. The Arizona Republican's daughter has been outspoken in her support of gay marriage. | AP photo

Besides Jeff Flake, the other “surprise” vote in favor of ENDA in November 2013 was Flake’s Arizona colleague John McCain. His daughter Meghan, a pundit and LGBT rights activist who will co-host a country music concert being put on by GLAAD in June, said she’s discussed LGBT issues with her father, though he continues to oppose gay marriage both publicly and privately. “There’s tension when I go home on occasion but my father and I get along great,” said Meghan McCain. “Obviously, I wish he would come around publicly for LGBT rights and marriage equality, but he’s 80 years old.” [McCain is 78]

Even many of those too set in their ways to embrace gay marriage have grown less and less motivated to oppose it. Over the weekend, Sean Buckley, a Georgetown student and great-nephew of the late William F. Buckley, came out as gay and a supporter of same-sex marriage in a Daily Beast op-ed.

Buckley told POLITICO that he’s been lobbying the older members of his family, who continue to oppose gay marriage. His great-uncle founded National Review as a publication that “stands athwart history, yelling Stop,” but the surviving older members of his family don’t expect to stop gay marriage, he said. “They see this as something that’s inevitable.”