Its anonymous reporter writes: “It is hard to imagine Ronald Reagan sponsoring a federal amendment banning gay marriage or limiting federal funding for stem-cell research.” There is something silly about what-would-Reagan-have-done speculation. If same-sex marriage had been an issue in the 1980s, it would have faced at least 85 percent opposition. In 2004, longtime Reagan aide William Clark wrote that Reagan “began a de facto ban on federal financing of embryo research that he held to throughout his presidency.”