Via Alex Massie I see that David Cameron’s Tories now have a second — second — openly gay, prominent member of his shadow cabinet who has publicly entered into a civil partnership [Nick Herbert]. The Telegraph reports,

[T]he civil partnership ceremony was held at Lambeth town hall in south London last week and was attended only by close relatives. The reception, a small lunch for both families, was held at Brown’s Hotel in Mayfair.

Herbert, the 45-year-old successor to Howard Flight in the true-blue seat of Arundel and South Downs, becomes the second member of David Cameron’s shadow cabinet to enter into a civil partnership. I am told that Cameron sent a message of support to the pair.

Last year, Alan Duncan, 51, the first openly homosexual Conservative MP, “married” James Dunseath, 39, who runs the press office at the International Futures Exchange, in the City of London.

It is remarkable, given the state of the debate on same sex marriage in American politics, that not only is this not really big news, but that Herbert is considered one of Cameron’s “rising stars” and received public support from both Cameron and his constituency association.

As Massie writes,

It’s hard to imagine too many senior gay Republicans feeling comfortable doing this, let alone doing so with the blessing of the party’s leader and their constituency association.

Then again, gay marriage in Britain has, generally speaking, been decoupled from religion. (Of course, some would say that everything else in Britain has been, so why not marriage too). Now maybe American conservatives (of one degree of religiosity or another) are correct that this sort of thing heralds the end of everything, but if so it’s striking how relaxed their British counterparts, for the most part, are about this imminent descent to Sodom.

Neither have conservatives in my home country of Canada hitched their wagons to the opposition of same sex marriage. Given the relative successes that are being experienced by British and Canadian conservatives, one has to wonder whether American conservative see the opportunity for rebranding in the midst of their own electoral troubles.

Massie further notes,

On one level this is trivial stuff, but it’s a reminder that the Republican party is increasingly out of step with its sister conservative parties around the world.

Of course cultural dynamics are very different in the US as compared to either Britain or Canada, but one can no doubt traces the rise in Cameron’s Tories and the relatively stable (though struggling to break out) popularity of Harper’s Conservatives to their willingness to embrace a more moderate and less divisive social tact than their American counterparts, leading to broader bases of support.

While embracing such position changes might seem anathema to the very notion of conservatism, the time might be ripe for such bold moves in American conservatism. Certainly it would seem that same sex marriage is an issue that will have some legs in 2009 and moving forward.