The Good. Mark Kirk is a moderate Republican, from a state in which the Republican Party is in such disarray that moderates can still make it through the primary process. His statement was dead on: “Same-sex couples should have the right to civil marriage. Our time on this Earth is limited, I know that better than most. Life comes down to who you love and who loves you back — government has no place in the middle.” Good on him.
The Bad. I just love it. Marriage equality should be denied to gays and lesbians because straight guys will commit fraud? I think that this is quite possibly the stupidest thing I have ever heard from a social conservative, and I’ve heard a lot of incredibly stupid things over the years.
The Practical. I was reading on snooze control until I read this: “What’s key is not to whine, to not give up, not to be like the pouty libertarians who refused to show up last November and ensured four more years of the least libertarian guy to ever occupy the Oval office.. Pouty? ROTFL!
I’m not sure that I care all that much whether or not libertarians are pouty, but I take issue with this statement: “The liberals want gay marriage as a wedge issue to drive conservatives apart and to marginalize them from the rest of America. Without it to beat conservatives with, they have to focus on other issues – and there aren’t many issues where they look good.”
Let me remind you of a fact: The President campaigned on economic and tax issues. He barely mentioned marriage equality. He won. He won big. Republicans haven’t figured that out yet, and Schlichter hasn’t figured it out yet, either, apparently.
posted by Clayton on
“The President campaigned on economic and tax issues. He barely mentioned marriage equality. ”
I’ll go you one better: every single Republican candidate in the primary field came out in support of DOMA, every single Republican candidate in the primary field pledged to support a constitutional amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman, and all but Mitt Romney (who equivocated) pledged to reinstate DADT.
So just who was using marriage as a wedge issue? Who was trying to drive whom apart?
And if using marriage equality as a wedge issue in an election is such a bad thing, why did the Bush-Cheney ticket do precisely that in 2004?
posted by Tom Scharbach on
And if using marriage equality as a wedge issue in an election is such a bad thing, why did the Bush-Cheney ticket do precisely that in 2004?
We’ll be treated to a lot of “the mean old Democrats are using marriage equality as a wedge issue” and “the mean old Democrats are want to keep the Republican Party anti-gay” in coming years. Talk about “pouty”.
It won’t work. The reason it won’t work is because we have 30-odd anti-marriage amendments to undo, state by state, work that will take a decade and will bring a determined, hard-fought retrograde battle by social conservatives.
Most of those battles will be fought in Republican-base states, where social conservatives dominate, and the Republican Party is going to have to take a stand, one way or the other. Lori Heine (see her comment below) is dead right: “Social conservatives will never simply shut up and go away on their own. They are fanatics, and fanatics never quit.” The future of the Republican Party will be determined in those states and in those battles.
The internal problems in the Republican Party are too deep, and the coming battles over the amendments will be too divisive internally, for “straddle” or “spin” or “sleight-of-hand”. It won’t work.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Oh, God, I missed this: “Everhart also said she could not understand how two gay people could ever have sex. “If it was natural, they would have the equipment to have a sexual relationship,” she told the Journal.”
Honey, don’t think about it to much or you might decide your husband is gay.
posted by Houndentenor on
I have a lot of straight friends. Not one of them is as obsessed about the way two men have sex (I suspect there’s some curiosity about women LOL) the way these anti-gay crusaders are. I guess it’s true what they say about people who are a little too anti-gay. But the idea now that two men can’t have sex after years of being told we’re using our junk the wrong way is hilarious. If we can’t actually have sex, what exactly were all those sodomy laws about?
The anti-equality crowd grows more shrill and irrational every day. They are the reason we’re winning the debate. Not to dismiss some people who have made good arguments for same sex marriage and gay rights, but it’s the absurd shrieking from the social conservatives that made this inevitable, especially when people actually know real gay people and see how little these rants have to do with the gay people that are part of their lives.
posted by Clayton on
“Everhart also said she could not understand how two gay people could ever have sex.”
This reminds me of an old joke. A young man came out to his parents. “Mom, Dad, I’m gay.”
The mother, with tears in her eyes, smiled sweetly and said, “You’re still our son.”
The father took the young man aside and said, “I’m going to love you no matter what. But I have a question: what exactly is it that two men do?”
The young man said, “You know all those things that you ask Mom to do that she won’t do? Well, that’s what we do.”
posted by Jorge on
On “The Practical”: They were right – it’s intellectually incoherent. Wrong doesn’t become right just because your friend does it
Uh… yes it does. Tribalism, maternal instinct, filial piety, fidelity, and many forms of religious loyalty all trend toward conformity with those one has a close bond or association with and competition against other groups. This type of behavior has been found in many social science studies and is widely considered an evolutionary social trait.
I think I’ll put an idealistic spin on this. Whom to put your trust in is a very important decision, and you have to make sure to associate with the right people. You want to associate with good, smart people, not dumb, harmful people. Now you are part of a team or family with someone who is smart, loyal, and honorable, someone you are proud to know. Now he or she goes somewhere difficult and takes a position you haven’t thought of before. Guess what? You are going to take that person seriously because s/he is one of your authorities.
I probably wouldn’t feel so strongly and peculiarly about marriage and feminism if I hadn’t grown up with parents who were in a happy marriage.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The core problem with the argument “Wrong doesn’t become right just because your friend does it. ” is that it posits that there is something wrong with homosexuality.
What has actually been wrong in the discussion we’ve been having about gays and lesbians for the last 40-odd years in this county — and it has been wrong since it started — is that social conservatives passed off their personal and our historic cultural biases against homosexuality as morality and religion, conjuring up apocalyptic visions of child recruitment, marriage crumbling and society collapsing to obliterate serious thought. The house of cards is coming down around their heads now that Americans actually have gotten to know us.
Years ago, after listening to the dreck strewn around by social conservatives for long enough to understand the circularity of their arguments, it dawned on me that their argument was not based on reason. It comes down to “Gay is wrong. Don’t bother me with the facts. Gay is wrong.” That does not wash.
posted by Jorge on
So tribalism beats tribalism. Well, I’m glad I put religion in there.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I’m glad you did, too, Jorge, because it points to something we should all keep in mind.
Religion is inherently tribal (“We are right and you are wrong …”) and inherently stands outside objective reason (“I know it is so because God says its so …”).
I include my own religion, with its foundational conviction that we are the chosen ones, in that assessment.
Our country was founded, for good reason, on the belief that our laws and public policy should be grounded in the common good, as determined by objective reason, rather than on the basis of religion and/or religious understanding.
Our founders kept in mind that their ancestors suffered greatly from religious tribalism. A number of the colonies were formed by persecuted religious minorities in England (Massachusetts by Puritans, Pennsylvania by Quakers, Maryland by Catholics).
No sooner got to this side of the pond when at least some of the persecuted started it up all over again (Rhode Island was founded by refugees from religious persecution in Massachusetts, and Catholics were not permitted to hold public office in Virginia).
All of that makes me happy to have rejected religion. “My unprovable beliefs are more accurate than your unprovable beliefs!” No thanks.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Well, if the states were to each establish an official state religion, and the religion was chosen based on the relative number of adherents, here’s the likely breakdown:
Roman Catholic = 21 states
Baptist = 11 states
Mormon = 2 states
Battleground = 16 states
Talk about a formula for creating religious turmoil …
We can only hope that sanity (and the principle that states cannot violate the federal Constitution) will prevail.
posted by TomJeffersonIII on
How To Change the GOP;
Step 1: Stop voting for Republicans who oppose gay rights — even if you define it (equality) by the more classical liberal/small ‘l’ libertarian definition. Stop giving them your time, money and or excuses.
Step 2; Get involved (as a Republican) in local politics — show up to primaries, conventions and caucuses in an effort to push for gay rights. Everything that I hear or read says this is how gay Democrats did it over the years.
Step 3; Run for public office as a gay Republican or a straight ally that supports gay rights. Provide an actual alternative to the wacky-religious right-GOP candidates. Even if you do not win, chances are you will not, eventually (if you start out local/small) you will win (0r at least help change the GOP bit by bit).
Step4: Stop expecting gay Democrats to vote Republican or make the Republican Party better on gay rights issues. Its very hard for a Democrat to have much persuasive cred within the GOP (or vice versa). Maybe this is a sign of how nasty and polarizingly partisan things have gotten, but its a reality.
Step5: Stop telling libertarian-minded folk to vote Republican, even through the Republican candidate is not a libertarian, has no interest in a classical liberal position on gay rights and (frankly) his economic polices are not really libertarian either (but he knows how to talk the talk).
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Dead on, TomJ.
posted by Jorge on
What with recent local scandals, I am highly tempted to get more involved.
But you know what?
Lately I think I have too much “gay marriage” in my blood, and that it’s interfering with who I am as a person on the inside. I’m not too eager to become a political monster. I need my rest every once in a while. I’ll consider getting involved in politics as a potentially good use of my time, one of my options. Commitment is something else entirely.
I have made it clear, to many gay GOP friends, that there are (again) instances when I will vote for a Democrat over a Republican. That I will NEVER vote for a social conservative.
When faced with a choice between a statist who wants to attack me and destroy my life and one who — however misguidedly I believe he or she is going about it — wants to protect me, the choice is easy.
Social conservatives will never simply shut up and go away on their own. They are fanatics, and fanatics never quit. They need to be exposed for the liars they are when they try to sneak into office with cheap “small government” rhetoric their past behavior makes plain they don’t mean. And they need to be defeated at the polls — as many times as necessary to persuade the GOP, at every level, to stop running this rot.
16 Comments for “Republicans Today”
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The Good. Mark Kirk is a moderate Republican, from a state in which the Republican Party is in such disarray that moderates can still make it through the primary process. His statement was dead on: “Same-sex couples should have the right to civil marriage. Our time on this Earth is limited, I know that better than most. Life comes down to who you love and who loves you back — government has no place in the middle.” Good on him.
The Bad. I just love it. Marriage equality should be denied to gays and lesbians because straight guys will commit fraud? I think that this is quite possibly the stupidest thing I have ever heard from a social conservative, and I’ve heard a lot of incredibly stupid things over the years.
The Practical. I was reading on snooze control until I read this: “What’s key is not to whine, to not give up, not to be like the pouty libertarians who refused to show up last November and ensured four more years of the least libertarian guy to ever occupy the Oval office.. Pouty? ROTFL!
I’m not sure that I care all that much whether or not libertarians are pouty, but I take issue with this statement: “The liberals want gay marriage as a wedge issue to drive conservatives apart and to marginalize them from the rest of America. Without it to beat conservatives with, they have to focus on other issues – and there aren’t many issues where they look good.”
Let me remind you of a fact: The President campaigned on economic and tax issues. He barely mentioned marriage equality. He won. He won big. Republicans haven’t figured that out yet, and Schlichter hasn’t figured it out yet, either, apparently.
posted by Clayton on
“The President campaigned on economic and tax issues. He barely mentioned marriage equality. ”
I’ll go you one better: every single Republican candidate in the primary field came out in support of DOMA, every single Republican candidate in the primary field pledged to support a constitutional amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman, and all but Mitt Romney (who equivocated) pledged to reinstate DADT.
So just who was using marriage as a wedge issue? Who was trying to drive whom apart?
And if using marriage equality as a wedge issue in an election is such a bad thing, why did the Bush-Cheney ticket do precisely that in 2004?
posted by Tom Scharbach on
And if using marriage equality as a wedge issue in an election is such a bad thing, why did the Bush-Cheney ticket do precisely that in 2004?
We’ll be treated to a lot of “the mean old Democrats are using marriage equality as a wedge issue” and “the mean old Democrats are want to keep the Republican Party anti-gay” in coming years. Talk about “pouty”.
And we’ll see a lot of sleight-of-hand “Democrats are/were just as anti-equality as Republicans” revisionist history, too. Pathetic.
It won’t work. The reason it won’t work is because we have 30-odd anti-marriage amendments to undo, state by state, work that will take a decade and will bring a determined, hard-fought retrograde battle by social conservatives.
Most of those battles will be fought in Republican-base states, where social conservatives dominate, and the Republican Party is going to have to take a stand, one way or the other. Lori Heine (see her comment below) is dead right: “Social conservatives will never simply shut up and go away on their own. They are fanatics, and fanatics never quit.” The future of the Republican Party will be determined in those states and in those battles.
The internal problems in the Republican Party are too deep, and the coming battles over the amendments will be too divisive internally, for “straddle” or “spin” or “sleight-of-hand”. It won’t work.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Oh, God, I missed this: “Everhart also said she could not understand how two gay people could ever have sex. “If it was natural, they would have the equipment to have a sexual relationship,” she told the Journal.”
Honey, don’t think about it to much or you might decide your husband is gay.
posted by Houndentenor on
I have a lot of straight friends. Not one of them is as obsessed about the way two men have sex (I suspect there’s some curiosity about women LOL) the way these anti-gay crusaders are. I guess it’s true what they say about people who are a little too anti-gay. But the idea now that two men can’t have sex after years of being told we’re using our junk the wrong way is hilarious. If we can’t actually have sex, what exactly were all those sodomy laws about?
The anti-equality crowd grows more shrill and irrational every day. They are the reason we’re winning the debate. Not to dismiss some people who have made good arguments for same sex marriage and gay rights, but it’s the absurd shrieking from the social conservatives that made this inevitable, especially when people actually know real gay people and see how little these rants have to do with the gay people that are part of their lives.
posted by Clayton on
“Everhart also said she could not understand how two gay people could ever have sex.”
This reminds me of an old joke. A young man came out to his parents. “Mom, Dad, I’m gay.”
The mother, with tears in her eyes, smiled sweetly and said, “You’re still our son.”
The father took the young man aside and said, “I’m going to love you no matter what. But I have a question: what exactly is it that two men do?”
The young man said, “You know all those things that you ask Mom to do that she won’t do? Well, that’s what we do.”
posted by Jorge on
On “The Practical”: They were right – it’s intellectually incoherent. Wrong doesn’t become right just because your friend does it
Uh… yes it does. Tribalism, maternal instinct, filial piety, fidelity, and many forms of religious loyalty all trend toward conformity with those one has a close bond or association with and competition against other groups. This type of behavior has been found in many social science studies and is widely considered an evolutionary social trait.
I think I’ll put an idealistic spin on this. Whom to put your trust in is a very important decision, and you have to make sure to associate with the right people. You want to associate with good, smart people, not dumb, harmful people. Now you are part of a team or family with someone who is smart, loyal, and honorable, someone you are proud to know. Now he or she goes somewhere difficult and takes a position you haven’t thought of before. Guess what? You are going to take that person seriously because s/he is one of your authorities.
I probably wouldn’t feel so strongly and peculiarly about marriage and feminism if I hadn’t grown up with parents who were in a happy marriage.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
The core problem with the argument “Wrong doesn’t become right just because your friend does it. ” is that it posits that there is something wrong with homosexuality.
What has actually been wrong in the discussion we’ve been having about gays and lesbians for the last 40-odd years in this county — and it has been wrong since it started — is that social conservatives passed off their personal and our historic cultural biases against homosexuality as morality and religion, conjuring up apocalyptic visions of child recruitment, marriage crumbling and society collapsing to obliterate serious thought. The house of cards is coming down around their heads now that Americans actually have gotten to know us.
Years ago, after listening to the dreck strewn around by social conservatives for long enough to understand the circularity of their arguments, it dawned on me that their argument was not based on reason. It comes down to “Gay is wrong. Don’t bother me with the facts. Gay is wrong.” That does not wash.
posted by Jorge on
So tribalism beats tribalism. Well, I’m glad I put religion in there.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
I’m glad you did, too, Jorge, because it points to something we should all keep in mind.
Religion is inherently tribal (“We are right and you are wrong …”) and inherently stands outside objective reason (“I know it is so because God says its so …”).
I include my own religion, with its foundational conviction that we are the chosen ones, in that assessment.
Our country was founded, for good reason, on the belief that our laws and public policy should be grounded in the common good, as determined by objective reason, rather than on the basis of religion and/or religious understanding.
Our founders kept in mind that their ancestors suffered greatly from religious tribalism. A number of the colonies were formed by persecuted religious minorities in England (Massachusetts by Puritans, Pennsylvania by Quakers, Maryland by Catholics).
No sooner got to this side of the pond when at least some of the persecuted started it up all over again (Rhode Island was founded by refugees from religious persecution in Massachusetts, and Catholics were not permitted to hold public office in Virginia).
I notice today that North Carolina Republican lawmakers have proposed a bill that exempts the state from federal court rulings that prohibit the establishment of an official state religion.
Here we go again …
posted by Houndentenor on
All of that makes me happy to have rejected religion. “My unprovable beliefs are more accurate than your unprovable beliefs!” No thanks.
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Well, if the states were to each establish an official state religion, and the religion was chosen based on the relative number of adherents, here’s the likely breakdown:
Roman Catholic = 21 states
Baptist = 11 states
Mormon = 2 states
Battleground = 16 states
Talk about a formula for creating religious turmoil …
We can only hope that sanity (and the principle that states cannot violate the federal Constitution) will prevail.
posted by TomJeffersonIII on
How To Change the GOP;
Step 1: Stop voting for Republicans who oppose gay rights — even if you define it (equality) by the more classical liberal/small ‘l’ libertarian definition. Stop giving them your time, money and or excuses.
Step 2; Get involved (as a Republican) in local politics — show up to primaries, conventions and caucuses in an effort to push for gay rights. Everything that I hear or read says this is how gay Democrats did it over the years.
Step 3; Run for public office as a gay Republican or a straight ally that supports gay rights. Provide an actual alternative to the wacky-religious right-GOP candidates. Even if you do not win, chances are you will not, eventually (if you start out local/small) you will win (0r at least help change the GOP bit by bit).
Step4: Stop expecting gay Democrats to vote Republican or make the Republican Party better on gay rights issues. Its very hard for a Democrat to have much persuasive cred within the GOP (or vice versa). Maybe this is a sign of how nasty and polarizingly partisan things have gotten, but its a reality.
Step5: Stop telling libertarian-minded folk to vote Republican, even through the Republican candidate is not a libertarian, has no interest in a classical liberal position on gay rights and (frankly) his economic polices are not really libertarian either (but he knows how to talk the talk).
posted by Tom Scharbach on
Dead on, TomJ.
posted by Jorge on
What with recent local scandals, I am highly tempted to get more involved.
But you know what?
Lately I think I have too much “gay marriage” in my blood, and that it’s interfering with who I am as a person on the inside. I’m not too eager to become a political monster. I need my rest every once in a while. I’ll consider getting involved in politics as a potentially good use of my time, one of my options. Commitment is something else entirely.
posted by Lori Heine on
I have made it clear, to many gay GOP friends, that there are (again) instances when I will vote for a Democrat over a Republican. That I will NEVER vote for a social conservative.
When faced with a choice between a statist who wants to attack me and destroy my life and one who — however misguidedly I believe he or she is going about it — wants to protect me, the choice is easy.
Social conservatives will never simply shut up and go away on their own. They are fanatics, and fanatics never quit. They need to be exposed for the liars they are when they try to sneak into office with cheap “small government” rhetoric their past behavior makes plain they don’t mean. And they need to be defeated at the polls — as many times as necessary to persuade the GOP, at every level, to stop running this rot.