Back during his 1994 Senate campaign in Massachusetts, he wrote, “If we are to achieve the goals we share, we must make equality for gays and lesbians a mainstream concern.” He never endorsed same-sex marriage, but he gave no inkling that he’d swerve rightward to the positions he articulated during the Republican primaries and currently holds. He favors a constitutional amendment limiting marriage to one man and one woman. He opposes even civil unions.

“I believe that marriage has been defined the same way for literally thousands of years by virtually every civilization in history and that marriage is, by its definition, a relationship between a man and woman,” he said earlier this year — a statement of curious sweep, given his religious ancestry. Little more than a hundred years ago, Mormons defined marriage as a relationship between a man and multiple women. That was the tradition. They ultimately decided that a new approach was necessary — and better. That’s all that those of us who advocate marriage equality are asking Romney and other political leaders to do.

People who know Romney well tell me that he’s not in the least judgmental about gays and lesbians and that he’s more or less accepting of them. That may be so, but it makes him, like others in his party, guilty of a kind of doublespeak, their private sentiments at odds with their public stances.

Steve Levitan, one of the creators of the television comedy “Modern Family,” dared Ann Romney last week to put her public advocacy where her viewing habits are. After she named his show, which spotlights a gay couple with an adopted child, as her favorite, he Tweeted: “We’ll offer her the role of officiant at Mitch & Cam’s wedding. As soon as it’s legal.”

Several gay Republicans with whom I spoke in Tampa said that the near-complete absence of any talk onstage about gays and lesbians was in fact a hopeful sign that the party’s extremists on gay issues had lost the war to moderates. At least gays and lesbians weren’t being cast in a negative light, as a way of riling the worst of the base.

“Our messaging within the party has been: if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all,” said R. Clarke Cooper, the executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay advocacy group.