I wonder sometimes what will be some of the defining issues of our time. It seems that after the massive upheaval President Obama released last week in his personal support of gay marriage, this may very well be one of them.

But based on the surge of opposition to Obama’s personal belief (not a policy shift, mind you), I wonder if many politicians who like to cater to the belief that the government should stay out of people’s personal lives have stopped to listen to themselves.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul is a good case in point. Last week, while at a Faith and Freedom Coalition meeting in Iowa, Sen. Paul joked that he didn’t believe President Obama’s view could get any “gayer.” Sen. Paul is, for those who may not remember the 2010 campaign, a strict libertarian who believes that government shouldn’t be in the business of telling people what to do. He also strictly supports a government ban on gay marriage.

Sen. Paul, like politicians who are wont to do from time to time, reached the height of hypocrisy with his opposition to gay marriage. No matter that one homosexual marrying another will have no effect on Sen. Paul’s life, not even the least bit, this is just the right sort of issue with which he should be siding with the president. If ever there was an issue that Sen. Paul could be spewing his libertarian view point, this is it.

And that goes for every other politician out there who have decided to ride the Tea Party political wave to Washington, D.C. or to their state capital. That goes for every candidate, Republican or not, who have decided that government should not be in the business of telling people what to do.

It seemed for several days last week that both Republicans and a few Democrats were so quick to jump on the bashing Obama bandwagon that they weren’t thinking as to how their views were going to be perceived by a majority of the nation. According to a recent CBS News/New York Times poll, a majority of Americans now favor same-sex unions. That means it will only be a matter of time before these same politicians, in an attempt to pander for votes, will announce that, like President Obama, their views on this issue have “evolved.” And if they want to remain in office, their views had better evolve, or else their legacies will be written on the same forgotten pages as those who stood in front of capitol buildings holding signs aloft protesting efforts to legalize interracial marriage.

I wonder how many people in America nowadays, outside of the fringe groups, feel that a white man marrying a black woman should ever be seen as an illegal act.

As Fox News’ Shepherd Smith put it last week, these politicians are going to fall assuredly on the “wrong side of history.”