Earlier this evening, during an appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show, Vice President Joe Biden expressed confidence that the Senate will pass the defense authorization bill and repeal the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy, saying that “everyone who was fired should be able to be reinstated if they wanted to.” But when Maddow asked Biden why the administration won’t order the military to stop discharging gay and lesbian servicemembers before the policy is officially repealed in the spring, Biden insisted that Democrats were bound by the existing compromise amendment:

MADDOW: In terms of the timing of that, if that goes as you say it’s possible that it could go. If that repeal happens, the timing is that the Defense Department is studying the issue through December. They’ve got another, I think, 60 days or something that they– after which they would have to delay any repeal process. So, we’d be looking at, best-case scenario for repeal, would be sometime in the spring. With the policy under such intense scrutiny, that study underway at the Defense Department, progress being made both in the courts and politically, why not suspend the discharges of people under the policy now, pending that Defense Department review? Why keep kicking people out now while all of this movement is happening towards ending the policy?

BIDEN: Because that is the compromise we basically had to make to get the votes to finally repeal it. In other words, everybody’s looking for, in my view, if I could just wave a wand, it would just be flat repeal. No one else would be able to suspend it. And everyone who was suspended would be able to come back if they wanted to. But the truth of the matter is, we had to build a consensus for this. Working very hard on the telephone. Calling people. And everybody’s looking forward to the orderly elimination of this law. I would prefer it not be orderly. I prefer it just end, boom, done. But that’s why that hasn’t happened. It’s resulted in us getting over 55 votes, I think we’ll get 55 vote, to flat repeal it.

Watch it:

Despite Biden’s explanation, many activists have argued that Obama could sign an executive order banning further military separations or increase the thresholds for separations.

In late July, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) — who has a questionable record on gay rights — announced that he would attend a fundraiser next week for the Log Cabin Republicans — the GOP’s leading gay advocacy organization. “Some things we won’t agree on,” Cornyn, who is also chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee said at the time. “But I think it’s always better to talk and then try find those things we can agree on rather than just assume there’s no common ground whatsoever.” “I don’t want people to misunderstand and think that I don’t respect the dignity of every human being regardless of sexual orientation,” Cornyn said.

But earlier today — after an initial tepid statement of support from NRSC executive director Rob Jesmer — Cornyn endorsed Delaware U.S. Senate GOP primary winner Christine O’Donnell, despite her strong history of anti-gay rhetoric and positions. “I reached out to Christine this morning, and as I have conveyed to all of our nominees, I offered her my personal congratulations and let her know that she has our support,” Cornyn wrote in an email. “This support includes a check for $42,000 –- the maximum allowable donation that we have provided to all of our nominees.” Later in the day, he appeared on Sean Hannity’s radio show to clear up any confusion about his commitment:

CORNYN: Well, really I don’t know the source of the rumors that were attributed to the Republican National Senatorial Committee. I’m the Chairman as you know and certainly without my authorization I corrected the record, talking to Christine this morning. Told her we will support her, in fact we send her some money already…I’ve encouraged my other colleagues to send money from their leadership PAC funds. We’re going to do everything we can to help her get elected in November.

O’Donnell has a long track record of saying and doing things that would suggest that she doesn’t respect the “dignity” of gay people. For instance, as president of Savior’s Alliance for Lifting the Truth (SALT), “O’Donnell helped facilitate an ex-gay program within the group, even bringing on a staff member to work exclusively on ex-gay issues.” During a 2000 interview on Fox’s now defunct Hannity & Colmes, “O’Donnell decried ‘offensive’ behavior at gay rights parades, complaining that ‘homosexuals’ special rights groups can get away with so much more than nobody else can!” “They’re getting away with nudity! They’re getting away with lasciviousness! They’re getting away with perversion,” she said.

As press secretary for Concerned Women of America, O’Donnell complained that policies extending health benefits to gay employees’ partners “legitimizes the homosexual lifestyle” and could “desensitize” Americans to same-sex relationships and lead to legal marriage. O’Donnell also opposed funding programs for AIDS sufferers through the Ryan White Act because she said that federal money has “in the past gone to teach teenagers to use condoms to engage in homosexual behavior that includes anal sex.” Most recently, in her race against Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE), O’Donnell insinuated that Castle is gay and then denied it.

And while social conservative organizations have criticized Cornyn for speaking at the Log Cabin event, LGBT friendly groups have remained mum on the Senator’s apparent contradiction. Reached today by phone, Jimmy LaSalvia, a co-founder of GOProud and its Executive Director, told me that “if you look at it, O’Donnell wasn’t elected on social issues. She was elected nominated for the same reason that a lot of other candidates are bring nominated and that’s to call an end to the status quo in Washington.”

The Log Cabin Republicans did not reply to my questions about Cornyn’s participation at next week’s fundraiser, despite repeated inquiries. It would be interesting to know if Cornyn is still invited to attend their event.

Just as Americans are growing more accepting of gay rights and same-sex marriage, a new study by Professor Brian Powell of Indiana University finds that “a majority of Americans now say their definition of family includes same-sex couples with children, as well as married gay and lesbian couples” — although they “do not consider unmarried cohabiting couples, either heterosexual or same-sex, to be a family unless they have children“:

“This is not because more people are gay now than in 2003,” he said. “This indicates a more open social environment in which individuals now feel more comfortable discussing and acknowledging sexuality. Ironically with all the antigay initiatives, all of a sudden people were saying the word ‘gay’ out loud. Just the discussion about it made people more comfortable.” [...]

“Neither the numbers from our data nor actual votes on initiatives are anywhere near the sufficient magnitude to support the idea that the public is ready to embrace same sex-couples with open arms,” the authors say. But, likening the resistance to laws and mores against interracial marriage, “we envisage a day in the near future when same-sex families also will gain acceptance by a large plurality of the public.”

In the midst of the Right’s attempts to whip its base into opposing gay rights in 2004 and the ongoing conservative effort against a slew of LGBT initiatives, these results are not only impressive, but also incredibly surprising. In fact, in an interview with me, Powell said that the conservative anti-gay campaigns actually increased the visibility of LGBT issues and made “a topic that seemed taboo a little bit less taboo.” “One of the fascinating things is that with all this discussion out there whether positive or negative, being able to say the words, just made people more comfortable,” he told me. “With all this discussion about same sex marriage…I think it made people more attuned to who there friends and relatives [are].”

“What did happen between 2003 and keeps coming up has been an increase in belief among Americans is that your sexuality is not really changeable,” he continued. “The idea that you can stop being gay just like you can stop being het is something that Americans are just increasingly not buying. And we found an increase in percentage of people who said sexuality is just genetics. There is also a good portion of people who say sexuality is God’s will…. [But] here, God’s will is used as a liberal response. Sexuality is just something not controlled by environment, it’s something that just happens. ”

Children are still central to the family equation, however. People think that “having a child is a signal that this relationship is at least intended to last,” Powell explained. “Several people said that even if two people break up years afterwards, there is a kid. It’s still always going to be a family.” “It signals, commitment, it signals responsibility, it signals some sort of guarantee.”

These findings are included in Powell’s new book “Counted Out: Same-Sex Relations and Americans’ Definitions of Family,” to be published today by the Russell Sage Foundation.