Bill Nelson the 51st Senator to Support Same-Sex Marriage Florida Senator Bill Nelson, who said last week that "marriage is between a man and a woman," said yesterday that he supports marriage equality. "If we are endowed by our creator with rights, then why shouldn't those be attainable by gays and lesbians?" he wrote in a statement to The Tampa Bay Times. Simply put, if the Lord made homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, why should I discriminate against their civil marriage? So I will add my name to the petition of senators asking the Supreme Court to declare the law that prohibits gay marriage unconstitutional. Some politicians evolve slowly; others make sudden leaps. It's phyletic gradualism versus punctuated equilibrium. Regardless, Mr. Nelson's reversal makes him the eighth Democratic senator to come out in support of same-sex unions in the last two weeks, and the 51st senator overall - a symbolic landmark. An outright majority of the Senate now endorses marriage equality, and it's actually (just barely) bipartisan: The tally is 49 Democrats and 2 Republicans. It's possible that Mr. Nelson is the last of the current wave of converts, at least from the Senate. Only six members of the Democratic caucus have yet to jump, and they're all from red states. Of that lot, Tim Johnson of South Dakota seems the most likely candidate since he's announced that he will not run for reelection in 2014.