Josh Barro, Columnist

The Supreme Court Can Save Republicans From Gay-Marriage Mess

A Supreme Court decision that makes the gay-marriage issue go away forever would be a huge gift to Â Republicans Â -- whether or not they know it.

March 18, 2013 at 7:13 PM UTC

By Josh Barro

Josh Barro is the lead writer for the Ticker, Bloomberg View's blog on economics, finance and politics. His primary areas of interest include tax and fiscal policy, state and local government, and planning and land use. Previously, Barro was a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research and a commercial real estate banker at Wells Fargo. He holds a bachelor's degree in psychology from Harvard and lives in Queens, New York.

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In his pro-gay marriage op-ed last week, Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio repeated a common argument against the idea that the Supreme Court should find a constitutional right to gay marriage: "An expansive court ruling would run the risk of deepening divisions rather than resolving them."

This is exactly wrong. An expansive court ruling would settle the gay-marriage issue for good, eliminating the need for 20 years of state legislative fights that will be painful for gays and hugely politically damaging to the Republican Party.