As the US supreme court prepares to weigh the constitutionality of same-sex marriage, Republican presidential contenders insist they have no problem with gay couples – they just don’t support their right to legally marry.



At least, that’s how several candidates recently defined their views on gay marriage in the GOP’s latest bid to deflect criticism that their stance is at odds with that of the vast majority of Americans.



The nation’s highest court is set to hear oral arguments next week in the challenges to state bans on same-sex marriage, the timing of which has left many of the current crop of Republican presidential candidates high and dry, struggling to find middle ground between their base’s support for “traditional” marriage, and new polls confirming they are in the minority on the issue of marriage equality.

An interview with the Florida senator Marco Rubio – in which the presidential candidate said he would attend a gay wedding despite his opposition to the marriage itself – seemed to set up a new litmus test for the GOP’s tolerance toward same-sex couples.

Faced with the same question, the Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker, said he had already attended a gay wedding, while Ohio’s governor, John Kasich, said he had plans to attend one soon.

This verbal jujitsu adds a new layer to the dilemma facing the Republican party on marriage equality: how to give tacit approval with one hand, but deny legislative approval with the other – without drawing too much attention to the cognitive dissonance.

The GOP’s right flank has held firm as ever; the former Pennsylvania senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he would refuse to attend a gay wedding; Texas senator Ted Cruz accused the media of twisting the question into “a battle of emotions and personalities”.

“That’s part of the ‘gotcha game’ the mainstream media plays, where they come after Republicans on every front, and it’s designed to caricature Republicans, to make them look stupid, or evil, or crazy, or extreme,” Cruz said to Hewitt.

At the First in the Nation summit last weekend in Nashua, New Hampshire, where the major Republican candidates came to test the waters in one of the earliest – and therefore most important – 2016 primary states, questions on the topic were often accompanied by a tense atmosphere.

Received wisdom still holds that you can’t run for president as a Republican without genuflecting to the evangelical base. But New Hampshire also has a fierce libertarian streak. Most Republicans here, a party insider told the Guardian, don’t care about gay marriage – and many of those that do feel strongly about the issue are in favour.

Perhaps that’s why, during his remarks before the GOP summit, the former Florida governor Jeb Bush reaffirmed his belief in “traditional marriage”, but insisted his position stemmed not from intolerance but from his faith.

“This is a view that transcends politics,” the likely presidential candidate said when a young Republican asked for his view on the party’s marriage platform. “But having said that, I have no animus in my heart, I have no hatred, no bitterness in my heart, for people that have a different view.”

Rubio tried to make a similar argument by drawing a comparison to how divorce is viewed by the Catholic faith. People attend second weddings all the time, he told ABC Fusion host Jorge Ramos, so why should there be any objection to attending a gay wedding?

All the while, Rubio – like Bush, who is regarded as his main competitor – reaffirmed his support for traditional marriage and said the decision should be left to individual states to decide.

But that argument could prove tricky as early as June, when the supreme court will decide whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right. If the court makes gay marriage the law of the land, Republicans are unlikely to find much room for nuance.

Recognizing that states may soon prove inconsequential to the discussion, the Democratic frontrunner, Hillary Clinton, last week shifted her stance and came out in support of gay marriage as a constitutional right. The former secretary of state was previously an avowed member of the the “leave it to the states” camp, an issue that has earned her criticism in progressive circles.

But even as Clinton positioned herself to face the general electorate, at least one of her potential primary opponents refused to let her off that easy.

Asked about gay marriage by the Guardian at a town hall at Harvard’s Kennedy School on Friday, the former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley said that he was “glad Secretary Clinton’s come around to the right positions on these issues”. He also released a video touting his longtime support for marriage equality.

However, Clinton campaign aide Karen Finney twice told MSNBC on Monday that Clinton has always supported gay marriage, and it was the media’s fault for not asking her the right questions.

But despite Finney’s efforts to pin the blame on the media, just last year Clinton said “marriage had always been a matter left to the states” in her view during a memorably tense interview with NPR’s Terry Gross. And as recently as last month, a Clinton spokesperson did not respond when asked for her position on the constitutionality of same-sex marriage.

