This is biggish news in the Times and on Twitter, for reasons that utterly escape me. How can it still qualify as newsworthy that a Republican — actually, we don’t know if she’s a Republican — backs gay marriage when Dick Cheney is on record as being in favor? That’s as high as you can get on the political food chain short of Bush pere or fils. Laura Bush is also on record as supporting gay marriage, and another would-be Republican First Lady went so far as to cut an ad in support of repealing DADT. And we all know about Ted Olson, Bush’s solicitor general. In fact, although he supported a constitutional marriage amendment, even Dubya wasn’t a passionate opponent of gays:

In discussing a meeting he had with Texas evangelist and one-time Southern Baptist leader James Robison, for example, Bush reportedly confided in Wead, “I think he wants me to attack homosexuals.” But, the future president said, he told Robison: “‘Look, James, I got to tell you two things right off the bat. One, I’m not going to kick gays, because I’m a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?'”

Bush also expresses concern over an aide’s report from a Christian Coalition meeting, according to the Times article. Reading from the report, he told Wead, “‘This crowd uses gays as the enemy. It’s hard to distinguish between fear of the homosexual political agenda and fear of homosexuality, however.'”

“This is an issue I have been trying to downplay,” Bush continued. “I think it is bad for Republicans to be kicking gays.”

Barbara’s not even an outlier for her age group: Among the 30 or under demographic, support for gay marriage is almost 60 percent. How many more prominent Republicans — Steve Schmidt, Ken Mehlman, etc etc — have to back marriage equality before the “conservative backs marriage equality” storyline isn’t much of a story anymore?