Breaking Ranks on the Right

Jonathan Rauch and others across the liberal/conservative spectrum ask Can Gay Wedlock Break Political Gridlock?: Some excerpts from their manifesto:

Suddenly, it’s in both parties’ interests to fight the broader decline of marriage. Here’s the case for a “marriage opportunity” agenda. …

But now, particularly as the legal and social barriers to gay marriage come down, we have reached a moment when we may finally be able to change course. Today we have a remarkable and perhaps even unique opportunity to think anew about the meaning and role of marriage and to come together as a nation to address the growing class divide in American marriage. …

Conservatives fighting for social stability and stronger families can now, based on the logic of their deepest values, recognize gays and lesbians who seek the same family values.

As I’ve said before, you won’t convert the hardcore traditionalist religious right, but other conservatives are starting to break ranks (witness the number of GOP governors in states where courts have ordered equal access to marriage, who have stated that same-sex marriage is now the law and it’s time to move on).

Other examples in today’s news: In New Hampshire “Dan Innis, the married gay man who unsuccessfully ran for Congress in New Hampshire, was confirmed to be a member of the state Republican Party’s leadership,” reports BuzzFeed. And Politico reports “The head of the Log Cabin Republicans has been invited to speak on a panel at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference, the pro-gay rights group announced Monday.” (The Washington Blade’s coverage is here.)

Small moves, perhaps, but signs of the times.

More. Via the Wall Street Journal:

After a court struck down Florida’s ban on same-sex marriage last month, [Jeb] Bush called for “respect for the rule of law.” The softer tone from Mr. Bush contrasts with the positions of other Republicans weighing presidential campaigns. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee recently said that expecting Christians to accept gay marriage is like “asking someone who’s Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli.” Other likely GOP candidates have taken stances akin to Mr. Bush’s. …

While socially conservative voters, who typically dominate several of the earliest presidential nominating contests, tend to oppose gay marriage, other Republicans see it as a wedge issue that would inhibit the nominee’s appeal in the general election. “I don’t know how you can be a conservative and want less government and yet want government to tell you what to do in your personal life,” said Julie Finley, who co-hosted a northern Virginia fundraiser for Mr. Bush earlier this month.

Furthermore. I didn’t intend for this to be a post about Jeb Bush, but here’s BuzzFeed on how things are changing in the GOP, which is the point of the original post:

When Bush officially launches his presidential bid later this year, he will likely do so with a campaign manager who has urged the Republican Party to adopt a pro-gay agenda; a chief strategist who signed a Supreme Court amicus brief arguing for marriage equality in California; a longtime adviser who once encouraged her minister to stick to his guns in preaching equality for same-sex couples; and a communications director who is openly gay.

Social conservative Rod Dreher laments:

To an extent that would have been unthinkable in past elections, one of the leading candidates for the Republican presidential nomination has stocked his inner circle with advisers who are vocal proponents of gay rights. … [Bush’s actions] ought to bring home to social conservatives how profoundly we have lost this thing. … Besides, we all know that the Supreme Court is going to constitutionalize same-sex marriage later this year, so there’s a political advantage to getting on the SSM bandwagon before SCOTUS leaves socially conservative Republicans behind.

Final word. Yes, Bush also says, when asked, “I believe in traditional marriage.” As do the GOP governors that are now enforcing marriage equality because it’s the law in their states. This, too, is politics, and there will still be attempts to placate the social conservative faction of the Republican base. But pretending that nothing is changing in the GOP is partisan hackery.

At CPAC, Ted Cruz was noticeably an outlier. That, too, is a sign of change.

11 Comments for “Breaking Ranks on the Right”

  1. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    The Washington Monthly article is a condensed version of a more detailed polemic from the American Institute of Values, an initiative spearheaded by David Blankenhorn and David Rausch.

    In general, I agree with both its goals and with its conclusions, although I have never viewed marriage primarily as a vehicle for wealth creation, as Blankenhorn/Rausch seem to do. Instead, I’ve seen the socioeconomic influence of marriage more along the lines espoused by Rauch in his 2004 book “Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America“, as a stabilizing/enabling force in our society.

    I hope that cultural conservatives might someday return to the fight for marriage, but I do not have the expectation that cultural conservatives will do so.

    I make that rather glum observation because I am old enough — 68 now — to have lived through the entire “cultural wars” movement. In all that time, going back into my young adulthood in the 1960’s,

    I have never seen any evidence at all that cultural conservatives are willing to embrace marriage as a positive good, in and of itself. Instead, what I’ve seen are cultural conservatives standing strong against anything and everything that would help the cultural understanding of marriage evolve from a tightly constricted model of male-dominated “traditional marriage” into a model that is more closely aligned with the emerging values of our society. In fact, cultural conservatives have fought hard to keep marriage from having any relevance to the emerging culture, and have, in fact, made the argument that marriage is not only unnecessary, but undesirable, unless it fits the tight confines of the “traditional marriage” model. I have a hard time seeing cultural conservatives changing their stripes at this point. I’m not even sure that cultural conservatives care about marriage in and of itself, except as a tool to constrict the emerging cultural evolution of our society.

    Gays and lesbians have fought against the cultural conservative tide. We have, for several decades, argued for marriage as a positive good. We have put our time and our money into achieving the goal of being allowed to marry, in the face of derision and scorn from cultural conservatives. We have battled back against character assassination, lies and enormous political/cultural pressure in order to make the case for marriage. And we will have to continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

    I’m not sure that grand statements make any sense. It seems to me that our best witness for the value of marriage is to enter into marriages and live our lives, countering the cultural conservative tide against marriage through our living example. In any event, having finally achieved the right to marry after a long and exhausting fight, and having married, that is what I plan to do.

    If cultural conservatives want to change their stripes and affirm that, then G-d bless them. If not, then so be it.

    • posted by Don on

      I agree completely. I just don’t see evangelicals moving toward modern marriage for straights, much less gays. Men have rigid roles and so do women in that worldview. It is precisely what they mean when they say “it’s not a marriage” because there cannot be rigid roles defined by gender.

      I see no problem with allowing them to define their own marriages as they see fit. But I think it is also precisely why so many marriages fail. It’s a terrible deal for women. I agree that I don’t see this ever changing in my lifetime.

      • posted by Houndentenor on

        The movement we see in polling of Evangelicals is among young people. We don’t see it reflected in the statements of the leadership. We’ll have to wait and see what happens as those younger people grow older and take on leadership positions in their churches, but that could be 15-25 years from now. Meanwhile the Evangelical political groups are doubling down on their anti-gay positions exacerbating the exodus of young people from churches.

  2. posted by Houndentenor on

    Those who claim to care about “saving marriage” ought to focus their attention on the high divorce rates among the poor. For a very long time the stereotype was that the rich divorced and remarried (often many times). Statistically we now find far less divorce among those with the highest incomes. I can’t help but wonder if many couples couldn’t benefit from marital counseling if only they could afford it. And of course one wonders if the stress of living on limited means isn’t a major cause of stress among those with lower incomes. (Of course, early marriage also correlates with higher divorce rates. So that should be factored in.

    Of course all of that presumes that the concern among the religious right is actually “saving marriage” rather than a carefully constructed catch phrase to hide the fact that they just don’t want gay people to have any rights under the law.

    And how interesting that Stephen finds some outlier in New England while ignoring the events unfolding in Arkansas and Alabama. Of course as with most homocons the actual red states are a world away from their comfy blue state/city lives where they can enjoy the benefits of liberal politics while railing against the same.

    • posted by Tom Scharbach on

      Of course all of that presumes that the concern among the religious right is actually “saving marriage” rather than a carefully constructed catch phrase to hide the fact that they just don’t want gay people to have any rights under the law.

      Let me simply say that Blankenhorn and Rauch have their work cut out for them if their goal is to engage cultural conservatives in any kind of meaningful effort to increase the number people getting married and the stability of those marriages. Cultural conservatives have done just about everything you can think of to demean marriage as a widely accepted societal standard for people living together and raising children.

      I should say, as well, that I just don’t get Rauch any more.

      A decade ago, Rauch wrote a brilliant polemic (“Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America“) arguing for marriage as the “gold standard”, documenting the ways in which marriage discrimination — and in particular civil unions and/or domestic partnerships as substitutes for marriage — undercut marriage as the “gold standard”. Then, within five years after writing that, he joined Blankenhorn in writing a NYT polemic arguing for “separate but equal”, -preserving marriage for straights but allowing gays and lesbians to enter into civil unions. Now that the fight for marriage equality is coming to a successful close, Rauch is back arguing for marriage as “gold standard”.

      Go figure.

      I think Rauch got it right the first time around, and has been wandering in the dark, bumping into chairs and tables, since then, in some sort of misguided efforts to find common cause with the cultural conservatives who don’t get a flying fork about marriage, except to the extent that it can be used as a hammer.

      • posted by Houndentenor on

        Even 10 years ago, full marriage equality seemed like a pipe dream. I don’t begrudge anyone for trying to get the best deal we could get under the circumstances. As it turned out, in most states the same people against gay marriage were against civil unions as well, so if we’re going to have the same fight, we might as well go for the whole enchilada and not some half-measure. No one in 2004 was predicting where we’d be by 2014 so I’m willing to give Rauch and others a break. It’s one thing to have an ideological position, but politics has to live inside the limits of what is possible at the time.

        • posted by Tom Scharbach on

          Rauch wrote “Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America” in 2004. The thesis of the book — and all the reasoning in it followed from the thesis — that it was critical for our society to keep marriage as a “gold standard” for relationships, both straight and gay/lesbian.

          In 2009, Rauch wrote the NTY editorial with Blankenhorn, in which he argued for a “deal” in which

          Congress would bestow the status of federal civil unions on same-sex marriages and civil unions granted at the state level, thereby conferring upon them most or all of the federal benefits and rights of marriage. But there would be a condition: Washington would recognize only those unions licensed in states with robust religious-conscience exceptions, which provide that religious organizations need not recognize same-sex unions against their will. The federal government would also enact religious-conscience protections of its own. All of these changes would be enacted in the same bill.

          Whatever else might be said, or not, about the “deal” (it didn’t have a chance in hell of going anywhere, and if Rauch didn’t know that, he should have), the “deal” tossed the idea of “marriage as gold standard” under the bus.

          You think that the “deal” was a call for a compromise; I think that it was abrogation of the entire rationale for seeking marriage — that marriage, as marriage and in and of itself, is valuable and important.

          Who knows which of us is right about Rauch’s thoughts at the time; but I don’t think that there can be any reasonable argument that the “deal” undercut the thesis of the 2004 book.

          Now Rauch and Blankenhorn are off on another windmill-tilt, it seems to me. I wish them all the success in the world, but I don’t think that cultural conservatives are going to grab the hymnal and sign along.

  3. posted by Dale of the Desert on

    I find it revealing to pay attention to Stephen’s use of personal pronouns, as I have pointed out before.

    Last year, when the Human Rights Campaign announced their One America Program, designed to send gay equality supporters into southern states to establish dialogues with cultural conservatives, Stephen had nothing but words of disparagement and derision to say about “them.”

    Now that tangible progress toward equality has been made in several southern states (whether related to HRC or not, I won’t speculate), Stephen is all full of kumbaya good will and optimism about how “we” have come a long way and “we” should establish dialogues with cultural conservatives, as if he had been in the vanguard all along.

    The slogan of this blog is “Forging a Gay Mainstream.” I wonder which definition of the verb “to forge” Stephen has in mind.

  4. posted by Kosh III on

    Yes another attack on equality from one of Stephen’s conservative heroes.
    Tell me again how the TeaNut/GOP is changing for the better.

    http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/19/sam-brownback-s-march-of-regress-on-lgbt-rights.html#

  5. posted by Tom Scharbach on

    As I’ve said before, you won’t convert the hardcore traditionalist religious right, but other conservatives are starting to break ranks …

    Roughly 55-60% of Americans now support marriage equality. As far as I can tell, we’ve won over most of the people who can be won over, although we will see support for marriage equality continue to grow as death comes to the older demographic. With time, we will get to 70%, but after that, growth toward support will probably level out.

    I don’t see any reason to bend over backwards to try to appease the 30% who will never support marriage equality. At some point, the effort to bring over the nay-sayers becomes a waste of time, and I think that we are close to that point.

    Meanwhile, we’ve got fires to put out.

    The number of bills seeking to limit/curtail/frustrate marriage equality is growing by the day, it seems, and more than a few are marching toward passage. A bill to allow state officials to refuse to perform marriages that offend their religious sensibilities passed the North Carolina state senate today, for example, and is headed for passage in the Assembly. Similar bills are on tap in other states. We are seeing the same thing with respect to repeal and/or curtailment of anti-discrimination laws. Arkansas now has a law on the books making it illegal for municipalities and counties to ban discrimination based on sexual orientation, and similar bills are being fast-tracked in Texas and West Virginia. And then, of course, there are the so-called “religious freedom” bills. As you say, Stephen, “Small moves, perhaps, but signs of the times.”

    My view is that we need to keep fighting until we have the fires put out. We don’t live in a post-equality world yet, no matter what Rauch and Blankenhorn think, and we have work to do.

    If and when we have the fires extinguished, we can look at ways to make nice to cultural conservatives.

  6. posted by Lori Heine on

    If the only issue I cared about was LGBT rights, I suppose I’d be more impressed with Jeb Bush. But the moral issues of our time are the insane and murderous wars we’re waging “for freedom” in the Middle East.

    My question to Jeb, if I could ask him one, would be “What are you going to do about getting us out of that quagmire? When are we going to stop wrecking other people’s countries and telling them how to run them?”

    I doubt any Bush is going to do anything but push more and more meddling in that region. Even if he chose Ellen DeGeneres as his running mate, it would not be enough to make me vote for a warmonger.

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