This is underscored by Kasich’s exuberance about actually having attended a same­-sex wedding, something he was even more ebullient about in an earlier interview: “If my [gay] friend invites me to a wedding my big question is ‘well, what time is it?’ I mean it’s a time to celebrate with people.” Hammering home the point the day after the debate he told CBS, “I’m for traditional marriage, but … I’ve got friends that don’t practice that, and … God bless them.” That doesn’t sound like a guy whose belief in traditional marriage extends beyond just merely thinking that it should still be legal.

The biggest concern with Kasich, though, is not his fingers­-crossed­-behind­-his­-back failure to just come out and say he supports gay marriage. It’s his complete dismissal of the potential threat to religious and other first amendment freedoms that all four dissenting justices warned of in Obergefell (including Chief Justice John Roberts, who had just upheld Obamacare the day before and so can hardly be written off as a right­wing yahoo). He is the only GOP candidate to go out of his way to downplay this threat, saying “let’s not get carried away.” At a news conference he gave perfunctory lip service to his “disappointment” with the ruling, but when a reporter asked about its impact on “a photographer refusing to work a same-­sex wedding,” he curtly replied “let’s not create problems where there frankly is (sic) none.” Afterwards, he quickly turned away from her in the impatient way a politician does when someone has just said something particularly inane.