Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyPosts Tagged As: Margaret Hoover
August 10th, 2010
One of the more interesting observations about Judge Walker’s decision overturning Proposition 8 is that outside of the Anti-Gay Industry, there has been very little objection from the Republican camp. (Seattle PI)
The Republican Party in 2004 used votes on gay and lesbian marriage in more than 20 states as a “wedge” issue to rouse the party faithful and turn out votes that reelected President Bush.
By contrast, GOP leaders appear to be following the maxim “Silence is Golden!” in reacting to a federal judge’s ruling against California’s Prop. 8, which banned same-sex marriage in America’s largest state.
Some radio and television commentators gave the decision some attention for a day, but political candidates, party officials, and pretty much everyone else appears to be hesitant to come out too strongly.
This is a reaction based, I believe, in a dawning recognition that anti-gay activism is a long-term losing strategy and may actually be harmful in the short term as well. As we can see from the phenomenally unsuccessful tour of the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage, there just is no public appetite for anti-gay rhetoric. And as recent public announcements have made clear, not only are the youth polling significantly pro-gay but also many Republican women have abandoned anti-gay positions.
One conservative who has not only left anti-gay rhetoric behind but has become an advocate for marriage equality is Fox commentator Margaret Hoover. She has now penned a commentary advising her fellow conservatives to think carefully about what accusations they fling about.
We conservatives have a well-founded narrative about judges and the courts. It is true that the federal bench is populated with liberals who view their role not as interpreting the law as it is written, but as policy makers empowered to sculpt social outcomes with which they agree.
The irony of this case is that Judge Walker is not a liberal activist judge but one whose career has proven him to be a tempered judge, true to the Reagan-Bush conservative jurisprudence that he was nominated to represent on the bench.
And she warns of the perils of putting anti-gay animus ahead of sound judicial reasoning.
The potential consequence that conservatives land on the wrong side of civil rights history again is the alienation of an entire generation of voters. With polling definitively indicating that Americans under age 30 overwhelmingly favor gay rights, with a majority supporting gay marriage according to the Pew Millennial Attitudes report published in February this year, there are multiple reasons for conservatives to think carefully before digging in their heels against gay marriage.
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