It is true that the best solution is to change the party from within. That being said the problem with the viewpoints of many within the GOP does not stop at gay Marriage.
Many within the Republican Party want to "re-criminalize" gay sex making the basic life of any gay person a living hell. Any home with multiple males would be subject to falsified reports, rumors and police raids. The State of Utah (home of good ol Mitt) tried to pass legislation to both re-criminalize and to eject "homosexual" from the State.
There are other extreme individuals who seriously would have rewarded the assailants who killed Matthew Shepherd.
This is not a matter of Marriage, it can be a matter of survival.
Where the problem lies is in the money. No matter how hard the gay GOP tries they cannot overcome the money donated to candidates by very sick extremists. The candidates pander to these kinds of individuals because right now this kind of thinking is not considered a crime but a hallmark of conservatism.
The marker to me with candidates running for office is not their political party but their willingness to stand up for what is right. That itself is an oxymoron in politics.
Right now a hallmark/landmark case may be in the infancy of taking place in Arizona with the investigations of Sheriff Joe Arpalo, who is proud of his record of cruelty, homophobia, bigotry, and racism. While many now see the man as an arrogant figure who thinks he IS the law rather than an enforcer of it, other extremists see him as a hero who will rid the State of Arizona of and the County he rules of all of the minorities that certain hate groups don't like. So far, he has had success because he has a great deal of dirt on all the Politicians who would go after him. Now, he may have stepped over the line and may be terminated from his position. The removal of the flagrant icons of homophobia and bigotry would go a long way to the removal of the thinking that feeds it. The Feds are now beginning to take a long hard look at him and this is good. He may Defy the Feds for a while, but he will not do so indefinitely.
If the GOP wants this or any election hands down all they have to do is to quit endorsing individuals and ideals who are not conservative, but instead qualify as extremist in nature and clean their own house. As long as they continue to grab money from a small percentage of individuals who are not conservative at all, but try to impose an extreme viewpoint on the rest of the world, and as a consequence "owe" their benefactors they will remain as they are and those trying to make change from the inside are wasting their time.
Right now the best way to rid the political system of extremists is to remove 100% or as close as is practical of them from political office. This will allow the GOP to remove their addiction to the money that these nut jobs represent. If they lose numerous offices by embracing bad ideas they will quickly wake up.
We are in horrific shape in that elections on all levels for many years have been not a choice of great leadership, but a choice of who will do the least harm OR "the lesser of evils".
Government will never "clean house" on it's own. The only way is for people to wake up and realize that none of the dreams we have will ever come true until after the bums have been removed from those working hard in our behalf.
If a party is interested in what is going on in your or my bedrooms or whom is qualified to marry another individual they are not concentrating on the economy, they are not concentrating on unemployment, they are concentrating on your personal life. This is not a way to "smaller government".
There was a time I was a hardcore GOP supporter. The GOP has lost the focus of what conservatism is all about and says one thing while in fact doing exactly the opposite. It is the job of Government to deal with the things that a Government must do for the people it represents, while staying away from their personal lives on all other levels not beneficial to that same group of people.
I myself could find a way to save billions of dollars each year while putting many back to work. But my methods do not result in palms being "greased" for or by special interest groups.