Four Years After Gay Soldier Was Booed, Debate Crowd Applauds Mention of Same-Sex Wedding

At a Republican presidential primary debate held in Orlando in September 2011, Fox News host Megyn Kelly played video of a gay soldier asking whether the candidates would reverse the Obama administration’s decision to let gay men and women serve openly. As the question finished, some (though not all) audience members booed. Four years later, at Thursday night’s debate in Cleveland, Kelly asked Ohio Gov. John Kasich how he would explain his opposition to same-sex marriage to one of his children if she were gay. Kasich answered that his opposition to legally recognized same-sex marriage would not keep him from loving his children if they were gay and that it had not, in fact, kept him from attending a recent same-sex wedding to which he’d been invited. As he delivered this message of (relative) tolerance, the audience cheered. Below, a video of those two moments—separated by four years and one big Supreme Court decision—one after the other.

Read more of Slate’s coverage of the GOP primary.