Roger L. Simon has a very thoughtful piece about Laura Bush's support for gay marriage.

Yes, that Laura Bush. The former first lady. Barack Obama is now to the right of her on this issue.

She proclaimed that support in her characteristic well-mannered, low-keyed fashion on Larry King Live. (Okay, nobody's perfect.) I even had the suspicion that her husband agreed with her, but for political considerations didn't say so.

What does this mean? Traditionally a woman like Bush would oppose gay marriage, but she has stepped outside that "tradition," seen the situation objectively and come to a different conclusion. I think it's interesting that the supposedly liberal Barack Obama has not been able to reach this conclusion or to perform any action that would indicate that he had. Meanwhile, the supposedly antediluvian Dick Cheney has expressed his support for same-sex marriage.

So what are we to think? Who is the "progressive" and who is the "conservative"? And what do these words mean? Well, not much to me, as I have said.

Everything is in flux. These days those who identify themselves as "liberals" are on the run because the lynchpin of their ideology - increased government spending - is bankrupting the world economy. I certainly agree with this analysis as do, according to the polls, most voters. But will this always be so? Not necessarily. At some point, governments may stop spending money and come out of bankruptcy or near bankruptcy. This will probably take a while, but then where will we be? Our infrastructures will likely be in sore need of repair. At that point many of us may feel it's time for governments to start spending money again. How inconsistent of us. But that's life. Things change.

Which brings me back to gay marriage. The world has changed on this issue and is continuing to change. As Laura Bush points out in her interview, it's a generational thing. Younger people in our culture don't consider homosexuality such a big deal. Same-sex marriage is also no big deal to them. Indeed, it has already come to pass. Our cities are filled with gay couples who are de facto married. Almost all of us know some of them. Many of us have them in our families. No social calamities have occurred that I know of, at least not from gay people living together.

We have real problems. That is not one of them, not even faintly.

What delights me about Laura Bush's remarks is the damage it will do to the ridiculous and ongoing culture war narrative.

MORE: The anti-gay commenters at FreeRepublic are trying to get me to change my mind about gay marriage. (Well, so did Matt Barber, but I'm stubborn.)