Acknowledging that it would jeopardize the passage of a sweeping immigration reform bill, a top ally of LGBT rights advocates will not call for a committee vote on an amendment that would include the spouses of LGBT individuals with the same standing as heterosexual couples in immigration law. 

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy announced "with a heavy heart" that he would withhold his amendment during the final hours of the committee's negotiations on the immigration bill. 

"I do not want to be the senator who asks Americans to choose between the love of their life and love of their country," he said in his opening remarks on the amendment, for which gay rights advocates had heavily lobbied in the weeks leading up to the marathon markup session.

Republican members of the Gang of Eight had made clear in the days before the vote that the LGBT provisions - if included - would be a dealbreaker for GOP supporters of the delicate bipartisan compromise. But gay rights organizations said the inclusion of the protections for LGBT individuals is a crucial social justice issue. 

The Human Rights Campaign, a leading gay rights group, called opposition to Leahy's proposal "deplorable" and vowed to keep up the fight on the Senate floor. 

"We are extremely disappointed that our allies did not put their anti-LGBT colleagues on the spot and force a vote on the measure that remains popular with the American people," the organization said in a statement. "We will continue to work hard to include bi-national same-sex couples as the bill moves to the floor and remain committed to the underlying principles of inclusive and comprehensive immigration reform." 

Rachel Tiven, the president of immigrant advocacy group Immigration Equality, said “there should be shame on both sides of the political aisle" for the move. 

"Despite widespread support from business, labor, faith, Latino and Asian-American advocates, Senators abandoned LGBT families without a vote," she said. 

South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of the Gang of Eight negotiators, affirmed that the amendment would fracture the "strong but fragile coalition" nurtured by the bipartisan group. 

"When it comes to passing this immigration bill, to interject a redefinition of marriage would be a bridge too far," he said. 

Before Leahy announced the withholding of the amendment, Gang of Eight members Dick Durbin and Chuck Schumer, both Democrats with strong records of supporting gay rights, each expressed anguish at the prospect of voting against the measure to preserve the chances of passage of the larger bill. 

"I believe this is the wrong moment. This is the wrong bill," said Durbin. 

Schumer acknowledged that current immigration policy towards LGBT foreign nationals amounts to  "rank discrimination"

But, he added, "I cannot support this amendment if it would bring down this bill." 

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California, said that she believes there is a "very good chance" that the Supreme Court will find the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional this summer, largely addressing the concerns of the LGBT community when it comes to protections for binational couples.

"I am for what Sen. Leahy is proposing," she added. "I would just implore you to hold off on this amendment at this time."

Ohio Republican Sen. Rob Portman's endorsement of same-sex marriage rights on Friday is the latest high-profile example of a sea change within the conservative movement toward gay rights.

A trickle of GOP leaders have begun to back the rights of gay and lesbian couples to marry, and activists at the conservative movement's signature gathering this week express tolerance for Republicans who support same-sex marriage, even if they personally disagree.

Portman, an influential senator whom Mitt Romney almost selected last year as his running mate, announced that he had changed his position toward same-sex marriage because one of his sons is gay. 

"I have come to believe that if two people are prepared to make a lifetime commitment to love and care for each other in good times and in bad, the government shouldn't deny them the opportunity to get married," the Ohio senator wrote in an op-ed for the Columbus Dispatch. 

He's not the only high-profile Republican to back marriage rights for same-sex couples, either. 

Jon Huntsman, a GOP presidential candidate in 2012 who had endorsed civil unions, said this year that he supports marriage rights. Furthermore, he framed it in conservative terms. 

Related: Portman announces his support for same-sex marriage

"There is nothing conservative about denying other Americans the ability to forge that same relationship with the person they love," he wrote. 

And Theodore Olson, a former solicitor general for President George W. Bush, has been one of the lead attorneys challenging California's Proposition 8, a ballot initiative barring same-sex marriage in that state. (Portman fretted in his op-ed that a court decision might hamper the political movement toward legalizing gay and lesbian weddings.) 

Brendan Hoffman / Getty Images, file

Sen. Rob Portman attends the 2012 Fiscal Summit on May 15, 2012 in Washington.

And Fred Malek, a Republican power-broker, told NBC News this week that conservatives shouldn't feel threatened by gays and lesbian couples who wish to marry.

"I've always felt that marriage is between a man and a woman, but other people don't agree with that," he said. "People should be able to live their lives the way they choose. And it's not going to threaten our overall value system or our country to allow gays to marry, if that's what they want to do."

In response to the Portman endorsement, a spokesman for Republican House Speaker John Boehner said, "Senator Portman is a great friend and ally, and the Speaker respects his position, but the speaker continues to believe that marriage is between a man and a woman."

It was a sentiment echoed by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, who said, "As a matter of personal religious conviction, I've always believed in marriage, I believe in the traditional marriage between a man and a woman.  But again, I think Senator Portman is entitled to his positions, and you know we are a party of diversity and, I think, of respect."

Gay rights is an issue that has changed rapidly in just a few years. President George W. Bush endorsed a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, and President Barack Obama had said he did not support same-sex marriage when he was first running for office in 2008. 

But Obama completed his "evolution" on gay rights (hastened by Vice President Joe Biden's inadvertent pronouncement of support for same-sex marriage) and announced his support for marriage rights last year. Romney had re-iterated his opposition to gay marriage at the time, but declined to use it as a cudgel versus Obama, calling same-sex marriage a "tender" issue. 

There's still resistance, though, to the issue. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, R, received a loud cheer on Thursday at this week's Conservative Political Action Conference when he said: "Just because I believe that states should have the right to define marriage in a traditional way does not make me a bigot."

Nonetheless, the broader change reflects broader public opinion. A plurality of Americans — 47 percent — said they support same-sex marriage, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released earlier this month. Forty-three percent of Americans oppose same-sex marriage. Looking inside of those numbers, independents back marriage rights by a 12-point margin, and nearly a quarter of Republicans — 23 percent — said they support same-sex marriage. 

But while the GOP has been slower to embrace same-sex marriage, the party's internal struggle toward same-sex marriage was on display this week at CPAC.

While a gay Republican group, GOProud, was formally barred from sponsoring CPAC this year, an informal discussion organized by conservatives who support same-sex marriage was one of the most popular on the confab's first day. 

The split is undeniably generational, too; young conservatives here at CPAC are much more inclined to support same-sex marriage, even if they don't personally support it.

"I would say that the majority of my friends — it's not so much that we agree with it, it's just that we don't care," said Gabe Snyder, a 20-year-old college student from North Carolina in attendance at CPAC. He said he personally opposes same-sex marriage, but believed that a generational change was afoot.

"I think this generation coming up is going to be different from our parents," said Snyder.

And Renee Knight Leberry, from South Carolina, who also personally opposes same-sex marriage, said that she didn't think Portman's conservative credentials were diminished at all by his pronouncement on Friday.

"I respect him; it's his choice, and as a Christian conservative, I respect anybody's choice. That's his son, and he loves his son. I don't think it would be right to judge him for supporting his son."

This story was originally published on Fri Mar 15, 2013 10:48 AM EDT

Updated 4:50 p.m. ET- President Barack Obama endorsed the right of same-sex couples to marry on Wednesday, a landmark pronouncement made in light of mounting pressure from gay rights advocates.

Obama became the first U.S. president to back the right of gay and lesbian couples to marry, a reversal from views expressed during the 2008 campaign, when he said he opposed same-sex marriage but favored civil unions as an alternative.

Related: The ‘evolution’ of Obama’s stance on gay marriage

Obama told ABC News that, after reflection, he had "concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married."

Related: Romney calls marriage 'tender' issue, skirts Obama remarks

In making his announcement, Obama completes what he had described as an “evolution” in his views on this issue, hastened by growing fervor this week involving gay rights. The growing pressure was capped Tuesday by North Carolina voters’ approval of a constitutional amendment banning not only same-sex marriages, but civil unions for gay and lesbian couples, as well.

Obama’s shift not only speaks to a broad swath of the electorate, which has exhibited increasing acceptance of same-sex marriage in opinion polls, but also gay and lesbian voters who compose a core part of Obama’s base, and have been major fundraisers for his re-election.

ABC News

President Barack Obama appears in an interview with ABC News on Wednesday, speaking in support of gay marriage. "It is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married," the president said.

Obama explained that he had hesitated in fully supporting same-sex marriage because he thought civil unions would be sufficient.

"I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that 'Don't Ask Don't Tell' is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married," he told ABC.

The president had found himself under increasing pressure this week to state his position unequivocally after Vice President Joe Biden voiced support for same-sex marriage.

"I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women, and heterosexual men and women marrying another are entitled to the same exact rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties," Biden said on NBC’s "Meet the Press." "And quite frankly, I don't see much of a distinction beyond that."

While the White House emphasized that Biden’s position wasn’t representative of the entire administration, Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s pronouncement Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” in support of same-sex marriage added to pressure on the president.

“I have no update on the president's personal views,” press secretary Jay Carney said repeatedly at Monday’s White House press briefing in reference to the president’s self-styled “evolution” on gay marriage.

As a result, Obama has risked fallout among his political base. The Washington Post reported this week that gay and liberal donors had threatened to withhold financial support for the president or a super PAC due to his refusal to sign an executive order barring discrimination of gays and lesbians in federal contracting.

And Obama was expected, too, to encounter frustration at a major Hollywood fundraiser this week at the home of actor George Clooney.

The overwhelming approval, too, of the measure, which Obama had opposed, in North Carolina -- a key swing state -- heightened speculation that the president might address the issue.

RELATED: North Carolina approves ban on same-sex marriage

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney re-iterated his opposition to both same-sex marriage and civil unions on Tuesday.

"I have the same view on marriage that I had when I was governor and that I've expressed many times," he said following the president's announcement. "I believe marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman."

Earlier, he told KDVR-TV in Denver: "I do not favor marriage between people of the same gender, and I do not favor civil unions if they are identical to marriage other than by name ... My view is the domestic partnership benefits, hospital visitation rights, and the like are appropriate but that the others are not."

Obama has faced tremendous pressure throughout his administration to advance gay rights.

Among his earliest acts as president included signing an executive order extending benefits to federal employees in same-sex partnerships in 2009. Obama also ordered the government to stop defending the Defense of Marriage Act -- the 1996 laws allowing states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages in other states -- in court.

The administration’s crowning achievement on gay rights came more methodically, though -- sometimes to the frustration of advocates for same-sex rights.

Obama signed the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” -- the military’s ban on openly gay or lesbian service members -- into law in December 2010. But the repeal came after months of legislative wrangling, and the president’s refusal to sign a simple order to make the change. And even after Obama signed the law, the implementation took months.

FIRST READ: Is Obama's gay marriage stance all about suburban voters?

Same-sex marriage is hardly the hot-button issue it was compared to the last decade, though. Support for it now eclipses opposition; 49 percent of Americans said that favor allowing gays and lesbians to marry, according to the March NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, while 40 percent oppose it. (In October 2009, 49 percent opposed same-sex marriages, while 41 percent supported them.)

Opinion has shifted especially among independent voters, who back marriage rights 46 percent to 37 percent. About three in 10 Republicans said they, too, support same-sex marriage.

However, of the 18 states making composing the “toss-up” or “lean” categories in NBC’s battleground map, 10 have banned same-sex marriage and civil unions outright, either by constitutional amendment or statute. Just two -- Iowa and New Hampshire -- have legalized gay marriage outright, while other states operate in more nebulous space when it comes to gay and lesbian couples.

Mitt Romney’s campaign was weathering a minor controversy by week’s end related to the resignation of a foreign policy aide who was gay, forcing the campaign to deny it had caved to fringe social conservatives who’d pressured Romney to fire the aide.

“We wanted him to stay with our team. He's a very accomplished spokesperson, and we select people not based upon their ethnicity or sexual preference or gender, but their capability,” Romney said Friday on Fox News of the aide, Richard Grenell, who stepped down from the Romney campaign on Tuesday.

Grenell was hired to act as Romney's spokesman on foreign policy and was, in fact, a veteran Republican aide, having served as U.N. Ambassador John Bolton's spokesman. He’d also built up a reputation over time for being especially combative with reporters.

But his resignation, announced on Tuesday after just two short weeks with the Romney campaign, has become ensnared by gay rights politics. In a statement Tuesday to the Washington Post, Grenell suggested that his sexual orientation had prompted social conservatives to sructinize the Romney campaign. In order to avoid causing a headache for his employer, Grenell said he had decided to step down, despite never having begun in earnest.

“I want to thank Governor Romney for his belief in me and my abilities and his clear message to me that being openly gay was a non-issue for him and his team,” he told the Post.

There was a degree of dyspepsia from the Family Research Council and Gary Bauer surrounding Grenell’s hiring, but the conservative outrage at the hiring was far from widespread.

Rather, voices on the right and press accounts of Grenell's ouster describe a more mixed set of variables that contributed to his resignation. After receiving blowback associated with Grenell’s combative reputation and controversial tweets on his account (which have since been scrubbed), Grenell was kept under wraps. That period overlapped with a fairly active cycle of foreign policy news, which, reportedly, drove Grenell’s frustration.

Complicating matters was the Romney campaign’s short leash with social conservatives, who have been stubborn in rallying around the presumptive Republican nominee.

“I don't think this has unfolded the way [the Romney campaign] wanted it to unfold. But I also think the initial reaction and initial assumptions people made weren't particularly surprising,” said Liz Mair, a Republican strategist who serves on the board of GOProud, a Republican group that advocates for gay rights.

She suggested that even if the Romney campaign hadn’t parted ways with Grenell because of his sexuality, the haphazard way in which the former Massachusetts governor had previously courted conservatives fed into a storyline that the Romney campaign caved to social conservatives.

“The ‘pander-bear’ narrative is a problem, because it led to people concluding he did something for reasons I don't think he did,” she suggested.

Moreover, the whole issue has put the Romney campaign on its heels when it comes to gay rights, forcing them to walk a fine line between allaying social conservatives’ concerns and not appearing to be intolerant to the general electorate.

That’s reflective of the evolving public views on same-sex marriage. A March Gallup poll found that a 53 percent of Americans said marriages among same-sex couples deserve recognition – the first time a majority had expressed support for legal gay marriage. (That same poll found that 28 percent of Republicans favor same-sex marriage.)

“Let me say this about Mitt Romney: when it comes to hiring, he strictly looks at the qualifications of the applicants. He does not consider extraneous factors like the race, ethnicity or sexual orientation,” Romney adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said Friday morning on MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown.”

Fehrnstrom referenced “voices of intolerance” that had come forth during the debate over Grenell, and described his boss, Romney, as someone who’s “confronted” those voices.

Romney has been relatively unambiguous about his support for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution intended to define marriage as limited to one man and one woman. And he hasn't shied away from using that to his political advantage.

"On my watch, we fought hard and prevented Massachusetts from becoming the Las Vegas of gay marriage," he said at this year's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in reference to his state supreme court's decision during the Romney governorship allowing same-sex marraiges. "When I am president, I will preserve the Defense of Marriage Act and I will fight for a federal amendment defining marriage as a relationship between one man and one woman."

But in other instances, Romney has sought to be a moderating influence within the GOP.

"Poisonous language does not advance our cause. It has never softened a single heart nor changed a single mind," he said at the Values Voters Summit last fall. (This line was the instance Fehrnstrom had cited as an example of Romney confronting intolerance. However, that remark was directed toward another speaker who had called Romney's Mormon faith a "cult," and wasn't specifically referencing same-sex marriage.)

But well before the Grenell flap emerged, Romney also described himself as an opponent of discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

"I am in favor of gay rights, but I believe marriage is a relationship between a man and a woman," he said last summer on CNN. In that same interview, he declined to say whether he thought homosexuality was a sin.

And at the "Meet the Press"/Facebook GOP debate in New Hampshire, Romney made this declaration: "If people are looking for someone who -- who will discriminate against gays or will in any way try and suggest that people -- that have different sexual orientation don’t have full rights in this country, they won’t find that in me."

A federal appeals court will issue its long-awaited decision Tuesday on the constitutionality of a 2008 ballot initiative in California banning same-sex marriages in the state.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is expected to issue its decision on Proposition 8, which just over 52 percent of California voters approved during the 2008 election.

The case, Perry v. Brown, has been closely monitored for its possible implications not just in California, but nationwide as well. A bipartisan pair of prominent attorneys, Theodore Olson and David Boies, have represented the opponents of Prop. 8, raising speculation that the case may eventually make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

If the U.S. Supreme Court were to hear the case, the decision could possibly have a wide-ranging impact on marriage law due to any precedent established in that case.

msnbc.com's Michael O'Brien contribued

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa --  Explaining that he's "not a lawyer," Rick Perry on Wednesday said he was unfamiliar with the anti-sodomy case Lawrence v. Texas litigated in part during his time as governor of Texas.

Perry responded to a question about the case, which struck down laws against sodomy in Texas as unconstitutional, with a soliloquy on the dangers of spending; Perry later admitted to reporters that he was unfamiliar with the case.

"And I wish I could tell you I know every Supreme Court case, I don't," Perry said when a voter in Cedar Rapids asked him about the landmark 2003 case that struck down a law criminalizing homosexual activity. "I'm not a lawyer, but here's what I do know: I know they're spending too much money in DC and $15 trillion worth of debt is on the back of that young man right there. And if we don't go in and cut the size of government, court cases aren't going to make one tinker's heck."

"And we can sit here and play 'I gotcha' questions on what about this Supreme Court case or whatever," he continued. "But let me tell you, you know and I know the problem in this country is spending in Washington DC, it's not some Supreme Court case."

Asked by Ken Herman, a journalist with the Austin-American Statesman, after the event if he knew what the case was about, Perry replied "I don't. I think I explained that to him."

The 6-3 decision attracted major public attention and offered a victory for the LGBT community,

Perry appeared in a crowded coffee shop before a raucous crowd of about 200 Iowans who roared approval for Perry's shots at Washington DC "insiders" and President Barack Obama's administration.

Repeating his earlier critiqueof former Sen. Rick Santorum's record on earmarks, an animated Perry declared "I'm calling you out, senator!"

While Santorum received most of Perry's ire Wednesday, Perry also offered a concise appraisal of apparent frontrunner Mitt Romney, even after defending the former Massachussetts governor's family history as the son of a politician.

When a questioner suggested that a Romney presidency could represent a dangerous "dynasty" -- Romney's father served as Michigan governor and ran for president in 1968 -- Perry defended public service "an honorable thing."

"I'm a politician's son," he joked. "My daddy was a county commissioner." Perry also declined to take the bait on the man's suggestion that Romney was from a different "socioeconomic" background but did take the opportunity to slam Romney as inconsistent on key issues.

"I am a consistent conservative. I've always been pro-life. I have always been pro-traditional marriage. I have always been a fiscal conservative. I have never been for global warming. Yeah, me and Mitt are different."

MANCHESTER, N.H. — It was an awkward moment over the breakfast table in Manchester.

On a campaign stop at a local diner, Mitt Romney sat down to chat with a Vietnam veteran who extended his hand to the former Massachusetts governor as Romney walked past his table. The vet, Bob Garon, who is gay, began to quiz Romney over his views on same-sex marriage, and what benefits the same-sex spouses of gay veterans should receive.

The exchange was brief, but testy.

"I believe that marriage is between a man and a woman and the defensive marriage act that is in Washington today defines benefits for whether for veterans or for non-veterans as between married spouses and for me that's between a man and woman," Romney said "We apparently disagree on that."

"You do not believe everyone is entitled to their Constitutional rights?" Garon replied.

"No, actually I think in the time the Constitution was written it was pretty clear that marriage is between a man and a woman and I don't believe the Supreme Court has changed that," said Romney.

"Oh, I guess the question was too hot," replied Garon, clearly disappointed. "No, I gave you the answer," Romney said.

"You have a good day governor," said Garon, dismissively.

As Romney got up to walk away after a few more not-so-pleasantries, Garon wished the former governor good luck, adding "You're going to need it."

"You're right about that," Romney said. "Good to meet you."

Garon later told reporters he would likely be supporting Ron Paul in the Republican primary here. He said it was his first, "and last" time meeting Governor Romney.

The White House announced further efforts Tuesday to consider the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in its foreign policy decision-making.

In a memo released today, President Obama directed all "agencies engaged abroad to ensure that U.S. diplomacy and foreign assistance promote and protect the human rights of LGBT persons." In short, it means the U.S. will now evaluate how countries treat its LGBT citizens in its foreign policy.

In the memo, the president refers to his speech at the United Nations earlier this year where he said, "No country should deny people their rights because of who they love, which is why we must stand up for the rights of gays and lesbians everywhere."

And in an effort to highlight this move, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a human rights policy speech in Geneva, Switzerland in honor of Human Rights Day. "Gay rights are human rights and human rights are gay rights," said the secretary. 

The White House outlines several steps agencies will take in protecting LGBT rights abroad:

• Combat the criminalization of LGBT status or conduct abroad. 
• Protect vulnerable LGBT refugees and asylum seekers. 
• Leverage foreign assistance to protect human rights and advance nondiscrimination. 
• Ensure swift and meaningful U.S. responses to human rights abuses of LGBT persons abroad. 
• Engage International Organizations in the fight against LGBT discrimination.
• Report on progress.