COLUMBUS, Ohio — Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio announced today that he has had a change of heart with regards to gay marriage thanks, in no small part, to his college-aged son who came out to his parents two years ago.

“When my son came to me and told me he was gay, my first reaction was shock, because I’d always thought that gay people came from the bowels of Satan,” said Senator Portman. “But I took another look at my wife’s vagina and reconfirmed that it was, in fact, very nice and not Satanic in any way. So I had to do some serious thinking.”

After having his wife examined by a series of Priests, Rabbis, and Imams to be absolutely sure that she was not Satan in disguise, Portman began to entertain thoughts that just maybe homosexuals were not inherently evil. “Suffice to say, this totally shattered my worldview,” he admitted.

“It was a rough time for the Senator,” remembered Aja Brooks, who serves as Portman’s Legislative Aide for Civil Rights, Women’s Issues, Family Issues, the Arts and Humanities, and Firearms. “He called me one night at two in the morning in a panic and asked me if I thought having a gay son made him a bad man. I assured him that his experience as George W. Bush’s budget director outweighed anything else on his resume.”

Portman had been considered a leading contender for the position of Mitt Romney’s running mate. When asked if the gayness of Portman’s son had had any effect on the selection of Paul Ryan instead, Matt Rhoades, who had served as Romney’s Chief of Staff at the time, was adamant that it was not. “Yes, we knew his son was gay. But that had no bearing on the decision to drop the popular Republican Senator from a blue state we had to win if we wanted the Presidency from the ticket and go with an unknown, untested, and slightly crazy Ayn RAnd worshipper from a sate where we had zero chance of competing,” he insisted. “It was his hair. Mitt didn’t like it. It didn’t look Vice Presidential enough.”

Asked why he waited two years after learning about the sexual orientation of his son to chance his views, Portman answered, “I spent years building up my homophobic views, supporting a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, voting for the Defense of Marriage Act, voting for a bill to prohibit gay couples in Washington from adopting children. Becoming a total hypocrite takes time.”

Portman says being openly supportive of gay rights is freeing, and he’s forever grateful to his son for the opportunity to be less of a dick. “I see the world in a whole new light,” he says. “I don’t mean I’m planning on becoming a Democrat or anything, but today is the first day of a new me. Who knows what the future will bring.

“Tomorrow I might try cross-dressing.”