I can say it plainly now, like a recovering 12-stepper admitting his powerlessness: I used to hate Elisabeth Hasselbeck.

My partner has had to put up with a lot of things over the past twenty years we've been together. The piles of unread newspapers and magazines around the house. (Yes, I am a Hoarders episode waiting to happen.) My phobia about certain food textures triggering my gag reflex. My need to have breakfast within two hours of waking, lest I take a human life.

But number one on his list of things that make him a candidate for sainthood is probably the fact that I DVR The View every single day. I watch it while cooking dinner or doing the dishes and have done this as far back as the Meredith Viera-Star Jones-Joy Behar-Lisa Ling years.

A lot of co-hosts have come and gone. Now Joy Behar is leaving at the end of the summer and Barbara Walters is wrapping up her tenure as Queen Doyenne by next spring. Hasselbeck is also leaving. She is jumping ship (or walking the plank, depending on how you look at it) to join FOX News.

Whether or not The View continues into its seventeenth (!) season is up to producer Bill Geddie and Walters. However, even with rumors of Jenny McCarthy and Brooke Shields waiting in the wings as replacements, it's unlikely the show will be as combustible as it has been with Hasselbeck seated (appropriately) at the far right of the table and couch for the past ten years. If you doubt me, watch the smack down Hasselbeck and Rosie O'Donnell engaged in which precipitated O'Donnell bailing on the show; it was raw and ugly and squirm-inducing, but it was definitely riveting TV.

Hasselbeck, a veteran of TV's Survivor, came on board at the height of George W. Bush's America. A bottle blonde (she admits it) who was openly outspoken if not confrontational about her conservative values, she seemed like a sop by Walters and company to the rising FOX News network and its audience, a blatant grab for more ratings. And Hasselbeck didn't disappoint; she was unafraid to be polarizing, even shrill, in her convictions. She wore her religious faith on her sleeve, she flew her patriotism as high as an eagle, and she almost immediately went mano-a-mano with the arch-liberal Joy Behar, who seemed convinced that life in post-9/11 George W. Bush's America was about as surreal and nightmarish as things could get.

Hasselbeck lacked the wry wit and warmth of Meredith Viera (arguably one of the coolest women ever to work in broadcast journalism), the diva-ness of Star Jones, or the street fighting Noo Yawk attitude of Behar (and, subsequently, O'Donnell), and she was not going to smooth things over in the gently condescending manner of Barbara Walters. She was damn sure that the president was right, the conservatives were right, and she was right, and if she came across as combative, humorless, or unpleasant, it didn't seem to matter a bit to her. Her inability to laugh at herself and handle her enemies with any sort of grace led to other awkward moments; Hasselbeck treated Bill Maher--who joked that we should basically give Hasselbeck to the Taliban—with obvious disdain, and regressed to a snippy eleven-year-old when confronted with a positively salivating Kathy Griffin, who purred, "You have something to say, Elisabeth?….Bring it." (Arguably, one of the funniest and most human moments Hasselbeck ever demonstrated on the show was when she oh-so-casually tossed some food that was being sampled into the audience, with the nonchalance that only a former high school star athlete could pull off.)

Initially, Hasselbeck was as conservative on social issues as she was on foreign policy, taxes, etc., yet over the course of her decade on the show, something remarkable happened—something that has mirrored the trend in American society. The woman who started out stridently anti-gay slowly, with the influence of Rosie O'Donnell and spending time with her children, began to thaw.

Despite their obvious political differences, O'Donnell and Hasselbeck became (at least temporarily) friends. Their children played together. They met each other's spouses. Hasselbeck did something that very few people on FOX news do: she actually listened to people she disagreed with. And slowly, slowly, she evolved. By the time this year rolled around, Hasselbeck was openly expressing support for virtually everything that might be termed "the gay agenda"--full adoption rights, the right to co-parent, the right to artificial insemination, the complete integration of gay and lesbian soldiers into the military, and full marriage rights for LGBT people. She has even spoken passionately—dare I say eloquently—about transgender kids and their trials and traumas, something the mainstream media has largely ignored while still focusing on gay bashing and the "It Gets Better" campaign. She seems to have taken her feelings about motherhood and gay issues , and applied them to her own children by asking "What if?"--or, "There but for the grace of God." (Sherri Shepherd, despite having a huge heart, is miles behind Hasselbeck and her approach to children and gay/gender issues.) And Hasselbeck's done it on national TV, day after day, for a decade, as public support for hot-button gay issues such as marriage equality has risen from the low 30% to now over 60%.

If there is another prominent conservative who has had this kind of "proof is in the pudding" evolution in America's public eye besides Ted Olson, I'm hard pressed to think of him or her.

That's why, as Hasselbeck jumps ship to join the legion of other blonde commentators on FOX, I am taking a moment to pause and say something I never thought I'd say a decade ago to that obnoxious, shrill, unlikable conservative woman: thank you.

Thank you for "evolving" on gay rights, and for now speaking about them as passionately as you did about conservative causes. Thank you for being gracious to President Obama, even as you held his feet to the fire on Obamacare and other issues. Thank you for being a leader on celiac disease and gluten intolerance, which has helped my niece tremendously. Thank you for finally stopping doing that weird staring-into-space with a big phony grin when someone said something that made you feel uncomfortable, and for learning how to occasionally toss of a quick bon mot with a wickedly sly smile that seems to illuminate the "real" you. Thank you for being at the forefront for defending kids who have had their lives ruined due to "sexting," and for passionately arguing that young men or women should not be facing prison time or be tagged as sex offenders because they were young and stupid enough to send a playfully inappropriate picture to a minor. Thank you for standing up for women's issues and for young girls' health and well-being, even if in your opinion that means being anti-abortion. And—bless you—thank you for standing with your fellow co-hosts against the onslaught of bile and idiocy that could only be Ann Coulter.

Joy Behar, Whoopi Goldberg, Meredith Viera, and Lisa Ling always had the gay community's back and were very public about their support, and the gay community responded in kind. But the gay community should also note when someone has earned our respect and appreciation over time with actions as well as words, and if we gave out rainbow stripes on her way out the door of ABC, I'd be the first to volunteer to be pinning them on Hasselbeck's sleeve.

And you know what? She'd probably wear them, and wear them proudly. Whatever else she may be, that's the sign of a dame with some class.

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