She's never going to be bold on those sorts of issues; what she is, is a triangulator. She brings the nation along eventually, but she's not yanking them down the road.
There's something to be said for that style of leadership (particularly when the alternative is something Trumpian) even though it isn't forward-leaning, as many would like. The result, at the end of the day, is the same, even as she preserves her "personal" logic about the topic, which she ascribes to her religiosity:
https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21724411-secret-power-inoffensiveness-what-angela-merkels-shift-gay-marriage-reveals-about-her
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....The first is not to outrun public opinion. Even Mrs Merkel’s riskiest policies—her decisions to switch off Germany’s nuclear power stations in 2011 and to let in refugees in 2015—responded to changes in public attitudes. Likewise, the chancellor firmly ruled out gay marriage when most Germans were opposed, but the latest YouGov poll puts support for it at 66% (and for gay adoption at 57%). Her change of mind realigns her with the public mood.
Second: be strategically inoffensive. Mrs Merkel wins elections not just by making people like her, but also by reducing the number of people who dislike her. She makes herself so tolerable to supporters of other parties that they stay at home on election day. At the SPD’s pre-election conference in Dortmund on June 25th, a frustrated Martin Schulz, her rival for the chancellorship, lambasted this technique of “asymmetric demobilisation” as an attack on democracy. Mrs Merkel’s new position on marriage, not stark enough to force either supporters or detractors to the polls, exemplifies his complaint.
This points to the third rule: triangulate deftly, and rapidly when events demand it. In recent weeks the Greens and the liberal Free Democrats confirmed that they would join no post-election coalition opposed to same-sex marriage. Then in Dortmund Mr Schulz made it an SPD red line. The issue threatened to overshadow Mrs Merkel’s manifesto launch on July 3rd and split the CDU’s liberal wing from its conservatives (including those tempted by the right-wing Alternative for Germany party). So she tested out the “question of conscience” line within party circles and was ready to use it when the question was put at the Brigitte event.
Contained within these rules are the cases for and against Mrs Merkel. To her fans she is an exemplary democrat, constantly calibrating and recalibrating according to the will of the people. To her critics she merely follows public opinion and is too hyper-cautious to shape it. Mrs Merkel’s shift on gay marriage is a welcome illustration of her strengths. That it comes so late reminds voters of her limitations.
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I wouldn't be surprised if she enjoys a full "I was silly to object" epiphany in a year's time or so.
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