Via National Journal: Group Aiming to Change GOP’s Anti-Gay-Marriage Platform Plank Expands:
American Unity Fund, a well-funded Republican group supporting same-sex marriage, is absorbing Young Conservatives for the Freedom to Marry’s effort to change the party platform.
Good luck to them, but:
Social conservatives, led by Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, are expected to staunchly oppose any changes to the party’s marriage platform.
Gay GOPers and their supporters may not succeed this time, but a generational change is underway, even in conservative circles.
That the pace of change on the right has slowed somewhat following the Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage is probably in response to the linkage of the right to marry with the denial of the rights of small businesses not to be forced to provide their services to same-sex weddings.
38 Comments for “A Good Fight”
posted by JohnInCA on
“the linkage of the right to marry with the denial of the rights of small businesses not to be forced to provide their services to same-sex weddings.”
What “linkage”? Every single one of those cases has been about non-discrimination law, not marriage. As evidenced by them happening in places that didn’t have marriage equality, and never in a place that doesn’t have non-discrimination laws.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
That the pace of change on the right has slowed somewhat following the Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage is probably in response to the linkage of the right to marry with the denial of the rights of small businesses not to be forced to provide their services to same-sex weddings.
Do you have any evidence of the “linkage”? It doesn’t make much sense to me.
My guess is that the pace of change has slowed because the low-hanging fruit (younger Republicans, younger Evangelicals, large-business Republicans, and so on) has been harvested, and a significant change in attitude among the rest of the Republican Party will not coming about until the age demographics have run their course.
posted by Mike in Houston on
The “linkage” only exists in Stephen & other homocon’s fevered dreams.
The Christian right has manufactured a whole persecution industry to keep the money machine rolling. That’s why you see Tony “Duggar” Perkins trolling for $$ to run ads in the fight over Houston’s Equal Rights Ordinance…
posted by Jorge on
“…their endeavor—which, importantly, asks the party to go neutral rather than support same-sex marriage…”
I’m neutral on this one.
A campaign for the Republican party to outright support same sex marriage (and laws recognizing it) would, conventional wisdom argues, alienate the religious conservative base so severely it could break the party apart. But there are enough smart people in the party who will quickly argue that will happen with even a neutral position.
The moderates see things this way: abortion is about human life, while gay marriage is about family life. The fact that gay families work without destroying society would seem to make any ethical questions moot, and religious questions questionable, while abortion will always be an ethical issue, based on (at worst) value judgments about when life begins.
The religious conservatives see things this way: abortion and gay marriage are both about God’s law or will. There is no possible social condition which disproves God’s will. It is highly likely that any social condition that provides evidence against God’s law is in some way not genuine. A neutral position on these subjects is a slippery slope toward an abdication of responsibility toward the moral purity of the country.
Am I overdoing the bias? I think that’s going to be the result.
That the pace of change on the right has slowed somewhat following the Supreme Court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage…
I have no information either way on whether this is even true or false.
…is probably in response to the linkage of the right to marry with the denial of the rights of small businesses not to be forced to provide their services to same-sex weddings.
Assuming the pace of change really is slowing on the right, I think it’s probably for the same reasons why, in my humble speculation, the pace of change is slowing on the left: limited attention span.
1. Nobody’s measuring it because everyone’s paying attention to the other “Gay News!”
2. Nobody really has time to do activism on gay marriage because everyone’s involved in activism on the other “Gay News!”
3. Because there has been a terminal outcome (barring 27 exceptions) on gay marriage, nobody sees any point in exerting limited activism hours on gay marriage.
posted by Doug on
“There is no possible social condition which disproves God’s will. ” I might also add that there is nothing that proves God’s will, or at least the right wings version of God’s will, on either abortion or same sex marriage either.
posted by Jorge on
We are not a theocracy; we are a secular country. Those who put a religious OPINION before the Constitution are traitors.
Sir, the Second Amendment gives the right to bear arms all the way up to the point of conspiracy for rebellion.
Think about it before you go accusing people of being traitors.
posted by Kosh III on
If you don’t support the most basic of our principles, then you at the least un-American.
Religion does NOT trump the Constitution, what exactly would you consider treason? aside from the 1861-1865 batch of traitors?
posted by Jorge on
If you don’t support the most basic of our principles, then you at the least un-American.
Okay let me be a little more blunt than I was to Kosh: Trying to cheat your way around the political reality that a certain opinion exists through false notions that the US Constitution treats some opinions as more equal than others is both irrelevant and counterproductive.
The Constitution forbids using a religion test to determine a citizen’s right to vote or express political opinions. Period. Stop shaming people for having political positions based on their religion.
If you want to impeach someone for violating an oath of office, you may do so if you can prove that the officeholder has indeed violated their oath of office. You cannot impeach an officeholder for considering their own religion to make any decision or carry out any action that does not violate their oath of office. To do so would be to place religion above the US Constitution.
posted by Doug on
That sounds like a Sharron Angle threat to me. Better watch yourself, Jorge, making threats is not cool.
posted by Kosh III on
“abortion and gay marriage are both about God’s law or will. There is no possible social condition which disproves God’s will. ”
We are not a theocracy; we are a secular country. Those who put a religious OPINION before the Constitution are traitors.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
There is no possible social condition which disproves God’s will.
A very odd statement, but the contrary is also true, as Doug pointed out.
We each decide, individually or collectively, based on our own spiritual/religious belief system, what does, and what does not, reflect G-d’s will, and what that means.
When I was a boy, one of the local ministers in town preached that the Shoah was G-d’s will, using Matthew 27:25 and the numerous condemnations of the Jews in John as his texts. What he preached was more or less standard Christian teaching of earlier times, modernized to bring it up to speed for the 1950’s.
It was disgusting. In his view, the mass murder of six million people was the will of the G-d.
Needless to say, not a G-d I would worship, but not uncommon, either. A vision of G-d as judgmental, vindictive, and cruel is at the heart of much of conservative Christianity, at least on the fringes inhabited by Franklin Graham, Tony Perkins, Brian Brown, Bryan Fischer, Matt Staver and the rest. Listen to them. It is enough to make anyone with the sense that G-d gave grasshoppers vomit.
That aside, I’ve noticed that when people are certain what G-d’s will might be in a given situation, the will of G-d is almost coincides near-perfectly with their own will. Enough said.
posted by Mike in Houston on
“No man that has ever lived has done a thing to please God–primarily. It was done to please himself, then God next.”
– Mark Twain, a Biography
posted by Jon on
Great quote!
posted by Jorge on
A vision of G-d as judgmental, vindictive, and cruel is at the heart of much of conservative Christianity
This being a cruel world, and not having a very strong belief in the Devil, I do not find this belief strange. I do find it strange for people to believe this requires them to be judgmental, cruel, and vindictive in turn.
posted by Dale of the Desert on
“We each decide, individually or collectively, based on our own spiritual/religious belief system, what does, and what does not, reflect G-d’s will, and what that means.”
Mark Twain (or somebody else) also once said “God created man in his own image, and man being a gentleman, returned the favor.” Notwithstanding the Bible, which does not hold up well as a basis for governmental law or policy, I’m not at all convinced that God HAS a will for us or for Creation. A vision maybe he has, but not a will. If he had a will he surely wouldn’t have done such an incomplete and imperfect job of it all, and we wouldn’t need evolution to improve the shortcomings.
posted by Lori Heine on
“I’m not at all convinced that God HAS a will for us or for Creation.”
Or perhaps religious conservatives mistake believing God has a will for us with their understanding of what that will is. A common psychological trait, in those on the religious right, is the notion that God somehow owes it to us to give us a full understanding of everything–to explain it all to us.
We probably couldn’t grasp it all, even if God did explain it.
As an Episcopalian (Dale, I believe I recall that you are one, too), I believe that the Bible is a collection of stories about people’s experience of God over time. A lot of it is human interpretation, which gets mixed in with God’s part of the equation.
The Kim Davis types think that God simply dictated the Bible to passive recorders, so it must be “God’s Word” in a sense that, to more liberal and progressive Christians, makes no sense.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
We probably couldn’t grasp it all, even if God did explain it.
Reminds me of a t-shirt slogan: “I can explain it to you, but I can’t understand it for you.”
Anyone who thinks that they understand G-d is a goddamn fool. And anybody who thinks that the truth about G-d is confined within the four corners of the Authorized Version is an idolator, confining G-d to a book.
The Kim Davis types think that God simply dictated the Bible to passive recorders, so it must be “God’s Word” in a sense that, to more liberal and progressive Christians, makes no sense.
It is worse than that, even. The Biblical literalists I know think that G-d dictated the Bible, but errors crept into the translations, and the editors of the Authorized Version had to straighten out the mess in order to keep the Bible true to the original folio. In other words, the Authorized Version is what G-d would have said if he had enough sense to dictate it right.
I even had one tell me that I should abandon reading the Tanakh in the traditional Masoretic text (large parts of which, of course, are translations of earlier Aramaic texts, the older Hebrew texts having been lost), and instead read an English-to-Hebrew translation of the Authorized Version by some fundamentalist crackpot, because the translation of a translation of numerous translations of other translations is more accurate than the oldest texts.
G-d laughs.
posted by Lori Heine on
I don’t think the old joke about fundamentalists insisting that Jesus spoke King James English is too far off.
Oh, and of course He’s blonde, and has apple cheeks and sky-blue eyes!
posted by Dale of the Desert on
At the risk of wandering too far afield, one of the books that has had a huge impact on my religious and world views is “The Religious Case Against Belief” by the religious scholar James Carse. I was given the book by a former dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. Not easy vacation reading, but you might find it interesting. It’s available on Kindle as well as print. For my own spiritual needs, wherever he uses the term “religion” I prefer to use the term “faith.”
posted by Houndentenor on
It’s clear across multiple polls that younger conservatives/Republicans are much less anti-gay than the older generations. The same is even true in surveys of Evangelicals. It’s just a matter of time. Since elected officials tend to be older and since seniors are the age group most likely to vote, especially in “off-year” elections, that change is going to take some time to see. Maybe they will surprise me. The change in public opinion on gay rights has surprised everyone so perhaps conservatives will follow the same trend. At some point the GOP is going to have to risk pissing off the religious right. It’s just a matter of when they realize this. You’d think the freak show of a 2016 Presidential field would be enough of a wake-up call.
posted by Tom Jefferson 3rd on
I’m not sure that I have seen a “well funded” group of Republicans campaigning for equality. I wish them luck in that sense.
Meanwhile…..GOP pundit suggests that the fascist Empire in the Star Wars franchise, is just the sort of government has he would want to live under…..
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The AUF is well-funded, as compared to other pro-equality efforts in the GOP. In the 2014 election cycle, the Fund’s PAC took in about $5 million and spent it on independent expenditures on behalf of Republican campaigns (just under a half in support of Dan Innes and Richard Tisei). By comparison, LCR’s PAC took in and spent about $40,000, which is peanuts.
posted by Doug on
The LRC is largely irrelevant and is basically just a group of Homocons that get together to congratulate themselves on how great it is to be gay and Republican.
posted by Houndentenor on
All I ever hear from homocons is how evil and treasonous liberals are. I never hear anything about how great it is to be a conservative, just how bad the “leftists” are.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
Was their ever a point in history, when the Log Cabin Republicans were actually relevant?
I realize that they were the focus of an American Dad episode, but
none of the “homocons” that I know, have much good to say about the Log Cabin Republicans.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Was their ever a point in history, when the Log Cabin Republicans were actually relevant?
I think that LCR was relevant during the 1990’s and into President Bush II’s first term. I think that LCR became irrelevant when President Bush, Karl Rove and Ken Mehlman designed and implemented the anti-marriage amendment strategy for the 2004 election. Since then, LCR has been hanging on for the sake of hanging on, with no real purpose or prospects.
posted by Jorge on
A little harsh, but I think he got the shape of the curve exactly right.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
LCR’s website lists active chapters in Arizona, California (11), Colorado, DC, Florida (5), Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New York (3), North Carolina, Ohio (2), Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas (5), Utah, Virginia (2), Washington and Wisconsin.
Most of the states listed are blue or purple states, but a few (Louisiana, South Carolina, Utah, Texas) are red states. Not surprisingly, the chapters in the red states are in the cities, because cities are where homocons tend to live.
I assume that the LCR list is accurate, but I don’t know. Wisconsin’s chapter seems to have gone defunct (its Facebook page returns “Not Found”), but that doesn’s surprise me. Governor Walker clamped down hard on party orthodoxy in preparation for his presidential run, and the moderates, like State Senator Dale Schultz, were all defeated in party primaries. Beyond the local/county level, I don’t think that there is a moderate Republican left in office, so there isn’t much material for LCR to work with, were LCR so inclined.
I don’t know about other states, but the Republican Party is going to need a ground-up rebuild in Wisconsin before the party can be expected to turn on equality issues.
I’m fascinated by LCR’s “Our History” page, which contains a lengthy recitation of LCR’s accomplishments from 1992 to 2004, but doesn’t seem to mention anything after the Bush II administration. I’m not sure what that means.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
Well, I do not see much of a presence of the LCR or the AUF in my neck of the woods. I suspect that the nearest chapter would be in a large, urbane, blue or purple city, like Chicago or Minneapolis.
posted by Kosh III on
I’ve never heard of AUF until now. As for the LCR, they are non-existent here, none in MS, AL, KY, WVa and other GOP paradises.
Funny how super-duper conservative states aren’t popular places for the homocons. I guess they prefer the safety of blue states over the “freedom” of conservatives.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
AUF put over 95% of its independent expenditures into a few targeted states in 2014 — Massachusetts (Tisei, Markey), New Hampshire (Innis), New York (Gibson, Hanna, Hayworth, Katko, Tenney), Colorado (Coffman), Florida (Garcia, Ros-Lehtinen), and Illinois (Dold, Schneider) — but doesn’t seem to have been active nationwide. It sounds like that might be changing. Whatever the strategy, I hope that AUF makes a positive impact.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
Stephen says; “rights of small businesses not to be forced to provide their services to same-sex weddings.”
What about the right of a small business not to be forced to provide services to interracial couple or an interfaith couple or a couple where one or both of the people have previously been divorced?
Also, since sexual orientation/gender identity is not covered in the Federal civil right code and is not covered in several State codes, it is already quite legal for a small business owner to refuse to offer his services for a same-sex wedding.
Now, if the proposed “religious freedom” bills did not (a) simply single out LGBT people for discrimination, and (b) were part of a larger bill to generally protect LGBT people from discrimination in such areas as banking, employment and housing, I would be much more inclined to support such legislation.
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
To Jorge;
1. You are correct; their can be no religious test for voting in the United States. Although the U.S. Supreme Court has never ruled on the matter directly. When the issue came up, it pointed the 1st Amendment and avoided getting into the separate “no religious test” clause. Now if — as some conservatives want — the 14th Amendment ceases to exist or ceases to apply the Federal Bill of Rights to the States, then a State could (as some technically do) have a religious test for voting (or other civil rights)
2. The Constitution says very, very, very little about the right to express a political opinion and nothing about political parties, interest groups, PACs or SuperPACS. This is one of those cases where the court has “read” the First Amendment as protecting many expressive activities, even if they are not directly related to say, eighteenth century understanding of “speech”.
3. The First Amendment does not prevent people from “shaming” other people because of their political or religious viewpoints or because some or all of said viewpoints have roots in some sort of faith or denominational creed.
People are certainly free to believe that God hates lobster, and thus eating lobster should be illegal. However, if the government were to ban people from eating lobster it would have to come up with a rational basis for doing so.
This is where people — even good people of various different religious and political viewpoints — make the mistake in thinking that their strongly held belief (“lobster are evil and eating lobster should be illegal”) is justification for the government being able to the government to fine, imprison or execute folks for eating lobster.
Jorge said: If you want to impeach someone for violating an oath of office, you may do so if you can prove that the officeholder has indeed violated their oath of office.
Well, Presidential impeachments are quite rare. How an elected politician can get booted out of office — short of an election, imprisonment, death or alien abduction — depends on what particular office you are talking about.
You said: You cannot impeach an officeholder for considering their own religion to make any decision or carry out any action that does not violate their oath of office.
If the office holder engages in illegal or unconstitutional discrimination, they can be held accountable. This is generally the potential problem when members of the government take the position that, “God wants me to pass law ‘x’ or ignore law ‘y'”.
Example: One aspect of “blue laws” is a requirement (justified by religious values) that businesses had to be closed on Sundays. These laws were upheld because they were justified as a labor rights issue (i.e. everyone needs a day off), and they typically do not apply to every business.
Example 2: If — as an example — the government can prove that eating lobster was akin to eating heroin, it might have a good “public health and safety” argument to make for imposing a ban.
posted by Jorge on
3. The First Amendment does not prevent people from “shaming” other people because of their political or religious viewpoints or because some or all of said viewpoints have roots in some sort of faith or denominational creed.
Neither does it prevent me from shaming other people as un-American for shaming other people as un-American.
However, if the government were to ban people from eating lobster it would have to come up with a rational basis for doing so.
This is where people — even good people of various different religious and political viewpoints — make the mistake in thinking that their strongly held belief (“lobster are evil and eating lobster should be illegal”) is justification for the government being able to the government to fine, imprison or execute folks for eating lobster.
The reverse is true as well: If a government were to ban people from eating lobster because of a belief that God hates lobster, the law would be constitutional so long as it could come up with a rational basis for doing so.* This is where good people–even good people of various different religious and political viewpoints, make the mistake of thinking that other people’s strongly held belief (“lobster are evil and eating lobster should be illegal”) disqualifies the government from being able to fine, imprison or execute folks for eating lobster.
As you are aware, I think the scenario I laid out happens much more often than the one you laid out.
*: While I’m a strong believer in the rational basis doctrine, I want to be very clear that I subscribe to the belief that the rational basis does not have to be the primary justification for passing the law, or even any justification for passing the law. It simply has to exist. I believe this for two reasons. One, I believe that a legitimate rational basis may exist implicitly, poorly understood amidst majoritarian value assumptions, only to be teased out in thoughtful analysis later. Two, I believe that requiring the rational basis to be explicitly defined at the time of legislation is an unwarrented breach of separation of powers, imposing an artificial requirement of thoughtful analysis into a legislative process that requires deliberation and consensus to act in response to problems that occur in real time. The 51st state of the union could pass a law saying “Thou shalt not kill”, and cite Genesis. It would still pass the rational basis test.
posted by Jorge on
Example: One aspect of “blue laws” is a requirement (justified by religious values) that businesses had to be closed on Sundays. These laws were upheld because they were justified as a labor rights issue (i.e. everyone needs a day off), and they typically do not apply to every business.
Example 2: If — as an example — the government can prove that eating lobster was akin to eating heroin, it might have a good “public health and safety” argument to make for imposing a ban.
I forgot that I had more of your post to read when I posted. I might have shortened it otherwise.
posted by Tom Jefferson 3rd on
Jorge
Simply say that “people believe that eating lobster is immoral”, would not meet the rational basis test….and a higher standard of review would probably kick in.
posted by Jorge on
Huh?
posted by Tom Jefferson III on
Jorge said: The reverse is true as well: If a government were to ban people from eating lobster because of a belief that God hates lobster, the law would be constitutional so long as it could come up with a rational basis for doing so.
The Truth: The government would need to justify its ban with something other than, “God hates lobster”. Simply say (in court) that “people believe that eating lobster is immoral”, would not meet the rational basis test.