One was made largely to a local audience – and you can’t tell me that most of South Carolina would be particularly pleased with being described as “so gay.” If they were fine with that to the extent that a conservative politician could back it, we wouldn’t have to be having this conversation. Sanford now is talking about the future of the GOP as a national party, and he’s saying that being perceived as antigay is a bad thing.

That’s nothing but good for us – especially given the other half of the context equation, which is that last summer was before an election, and now, it’s after an election where the GOP got our hats handed to us. Many Republicans are recognizing that something has to change – and if in that environment we’re hearing things that are, at minimum, encouraging less anti-gay behavior from my party, that’s something we should support.

Reward small steps in the right direction, and you encourage more. Attack somebody for being too late to change, or changing too slowly, and they’ll go right back to what they know and are comfortable with, and we’ll have missed an opportunity. This is how dialogue works, and it’s working today. Choose to be happy about it – it’ll give you less heartburn, and get us farther as a movement.