Ann Coulter has made a lucrative career out of being the outspoken, sometimes outrageous Cassandra of the far right, denouncing a group of New Jersey 9/11 widows for what she saw as enjoying their husbands’ deaths too much; using an anti-gay epithet to describe Senator John Edwards; and blaming the mainstream media for conspiring against God-fearing Christians. Now that members of the Tea Party movement have stolen much of her thunder, Ms. Coulter is taking some surprising new positions. She called the decision to send more troops into Afghanistan “insane,” warning that it could be a new Vietnam. She has decried fellow Republicans for continuing to insist President Obama is Muslim. And perhaps most startling, she wants to bring more gay Republicans into the conservative fold…

Ms. Coulter, a former constitutional lawyer, says she has spent considerable time researching marriage and gay rights. She boasted of having several gay friends. She has a gay cousin, too, though she said she hasn’t seen him in two decades and wrote in an e-mail that “he has less impact on what I think about gay issues than Nathan Lane.” (“excellent performer!” she wrote.) “Everybody wants a gay neighbor,” Ms. Coulter said. Of conservatives, she added enthusiastically, “We’ve always liked gays!”

But the sudden zeal might strike some as an opportunistic grab for a spotlight that has faded somewhat since the early 2000s, when she cut a swath through the mainstream media. “I happen to think that Ann believes everything she says,” said Bill Maher, the host of “Real Time,” who is a friend. But at the same time, “it is a bunch of show business. You are working in the media. You are in makeup.” For a person like Ms. Coulter, Mr. Maher said, “once they are in the public eye, they don’t want to be irrelevant.”