Marriage is an institution that strengthens and stabilizes society. It is an institution that has the capacity to bring profound joy and happiness to people and it is a matter of equality and keeping faith of one of the charters of the nation, the right to live your life.
What left wing politician made this radical statement? Were the attendees at a high profile marriage equality fund raising party the usual suspects, the bleeding heart liberals?
Actually, no. Turns out some big shot Republicans are getting on board:
I think there is a growing mass of people in Republican politics who are fundamentally sick and tired about being lectured to about morality and how to live your life by a bunch of people who have been married three or four times and are more likely to be seen outside a brothel on a Thursday night than being at home with their kids… There is a fundamental indecency to the vitriol and the hatred directed against decent people because of their sexuality. People have reached a critical mass with this.
According to Sam Stein’s blog, the prominent Republicans who are publicly backing marriage equality include former McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt, former Bush campaign manager and Republican National Committee chair Ken Mehlman (who recently came out of the closet), former New Jersey governor Christie Todd Whitman, Mary Cheney (the lesbian daughter of former VP Dick Cheney), and Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels. Of course, we previously blogged about the influential Republican lawyer (Ted Olson) behind the court case challenge to Prop 8 that is working its way through the court system.
But then there is the little matter of the Tea Party–the angry, gun-toting, populist, nativist, anti-Muslim, homophobic, racist, modern version of the “Know Nothings”* who are threatening to take over the Republican party, if they haven’t already done so. Time will tell if the Republican big tent can contain the bloody wrestling match between the establishment Republican elites and what is euphemistically referred to as “the base”.
*”The Know-Nothing movement was a nativist American political movement of the 1840s and 1850s. It was empowered by popular fears that the country was being overwhelmed by German and Irish Catholic immigrants, who were often regarded as hostile to Anglo-Saxon values and controlled by the Pope in Rome. Mainly active from 1854 to 1856, it strove to curb immigration and naturalization, though its efforts met with little success. Membership was limited to Protestant males of British lineage over the age of twenty-one.” Wikipedia
“Marriage is an institution that strengthens and stabilizes society.” Really, if that is the case we are in big trouble.