Even Fox News has acknowledged that Republicans have begun to embrace gay marriage. In a recent poll, Fox found that support for gay marriage has climbed 32% since 2003, across the nation. Support among Republicans has climbed by nearly 20% since 2008.

To stay relevant and increase their stature as a modern party, the Republicans have no choice but to support gay marriage. By their next national convention, they will have adopted legal gay marriage as a policy, not by a landslide, but by enough for it to matter. There will still remain the stubborn Republican establishmentarians, like Carl Rove, who will always support something as primitive as traditional marriage, not a kind of marriage that is based on indiscriminate love.

We have several people to thank for this long needed shift within the Republican and conservative establishments in America. We can thank the President, one of the first to vocally support gay marriage. He made it an issue early in the 2012 presidential campaign. It helped shed light on this deep flaw in Republican policy that has held the party back. Most Republicans listened. But let's not get carried away with thanking Obama, as there really isn't any other reason for conservatives to appreciate him.