On ABC’s This Week in 1996, the Family Research Council’s Gary Bauer had blunt words for then-Rep. Barney Frank, who was questioning the Defense of Marriage Act as it loomed before Congress. “Healthy societies endorse heterosexual relationships between men and women,” Bauer told him. “You don’t have to be right wing to believe that men marrying men and women marrying women is a dopey idea, sir.”
Nearly two decades later, with DOMA killed by the Supreme Court and Frank married to his longtime partner, that conversation has fundamentally changed. Out-of-hand dismissals and comparisons to polygamy and bestality have given way to an era when Fox News hosts demand that conservative guests explain exactly who is harmed by marriage equality. Watch the transition over 25 years in the video above.
