Yep, “Call Him Cynical”: Rand Paul Rebuked For Gay Marriage Remark
Sen. Rand Paul, who said he wasn’t sure President Obama‘s views on marriage “could get any gayer,” was rebuked by an influential evangelical leader Sunday.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, appearing onCBS’ “Face the Nation,” strongly disagreed with the Kentucky Republican’s choice of words.
“I don’t think this is something we should joke about,” Perkins said. “We are talking about individuals who feel very strongly one way or the other, and I think we should be civil, respectful, allowing all sides to have the debate…. I think this is not something to laugh about. It’s not something to poke fun at other people about. This is a very serious issue.”
Perkins’ words were echoed by Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on NBC’s“Meet the Press” Sunday.
“People in this country, no matter straight or gay, deserve dignity and respect. However, that doesn’t mean it carries on to marriage,” Priebus said. “I think that most Americans agree that in this country, the legal and historic and the religious union marriage has to have the definition of one man and one woman.”
Paul made his remarks during a meeting of the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Iowa on Friday.
“The president recently weighed in on marriage and you know he said his views were evolving on marriage. Call me cynical, but I wasn’t sure his views on marriage could get any gayer,” he said, drawing laughter from the audience.
Same-sex marriage surged to the forefront of political debate after Obama declared his support last week.
In an interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts — hastily arranged to quiet the fallout from Vice PresidentJoe Biden’s comments days earlier that he was “absolutely comfortable” with same-sex marriage — Obama said: “At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.” He also said it was “the golden rule, you know? Treat others the way you’d want to be treated.”
In response, likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney reiterated his belief that “marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman.”
And Rand Paul’s father, GOP presidential hopeful Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, said the government should not make rules on marriage.
The libertarian view, he told Fox News, is, “Stay out of people’s lives. I would like the state to stay out of marriage…. Let two people define marriage.”
By: Morgan Little, The Los Angeles Times, May 13, 2012
“Look Out For Thunderbolts”: The President Dares To Defy Franklin Graham
We still don’t know for sure who if anyone is responsible for shoving 93-year-old Billy Graham back into the harness of right-wing politics after so many years of devoting himself to loftier causes, in order to marginally boost the numbers for North Carolina’s Amendment One. But this statement from his son in response to the president’s announcement of support for same-sex marriage is certainly a pretty big hint:
On Tuesday my state of North Carolina became the 31st state to approve a constitutional amendment defining marriage as being between a man and a woman. While the move to pass amendments defining marriage is relatively new, the definition of marriage is 8,000 years old and was defined not by man, but by God Himself.
In changing his position from that of Senator/candidate Obama, President Obama has, in my view, shaken his fist at the same God who created and defined marriage. It grieves me that our president would now affirm same-sex marriage, though I believe it grieves God even more.
The institution of marriage should not be defined by presidents or polls, governors or the media. The definition was set long ago and changing legislation or policy will never change God’s definition. This is a sad day for America. May God help us.”
A swift response to Franklin Graham from a fellow North Carolina minister, the Rev. Murdoch Smith, pastor of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Charlotte, said it all for me: “I am always suspect when someone says that they know the mind of God.”
I understand that many sincere Christians fundamentalists believe they are submitting themselves to God and subordinating their own egos and their own self-interest by simply following in their lives what they understand to be infallible divine revelation of the Bible. Many of them, indeed, are so humble it would not occur to them to impose their views on other people, much less force them to live as they do.
If there is anything humble or self-effacing or ego-immolating about Franklin Graham, I certainly don’t see it. As Rev. Smith says, he doesn’t follow God; he knows God and speaks for him, the God that not only fully reveals his Will to Franklin Graham via Franklin Graham’s infallible interpretation of scripture, but through God’s great and characteristic conservatism, his deep and manifest satisfaction with people like Franklin Graham who defend the ways things used to be before women and gay people and other lesser breeds got all uppity.
When people like Graham presume to accuse the President of the United States of “shaking his fist at God,” they are assuming the Prophetic Stance, the Hebrew tradition of calling down divine wrath on a depraved society. Ask yourselves: what kind of prophet would look at today’s world, with its poverty and violence and gross inequality, its environmental brinksmanship, its intolerance, its sheer wastefulness and lack of charity—and decide that what merits divine wrath is gay marriage? What sort of man of God could look at all the grievous occurrences on earth, and declare, with absolutely no indication of self-doubt, that God is grieving over gay people deciding to commit themselves to each other in love?
I’m sorry, I just do not get it. Graham has confused himself with God to an extent that when Barack Obama dares take a position he doesn’t like, he’s shaking his fist at God. I think Franklin Graham’s the one who’d better look out for thunderbolts.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, May 11, 2012
“No Escaping The Culture Wars”: Every Time Mitt Thinks He’s Out, He’s Pulled Right Back In
There was a time not long ago when Democrats feared the culture war. They’d try to make campaigns about things like economic fairness, and just when things seemed to be going their way, Republicans would jump out from behind a bush and shout “God! Guns! Gays!” Voters would scream in alarm and pull the lever for the GOP. But here we are today, with Republicans desperately trying to change the subject away from gay marriage and back to the economy. Whodathunkit?
Just a few days ago, most people thought it would be too risky for President Obama to come out and support marriage equality. But now not only has he come out in support, his campaign has released a web ad touting his support for it and slamming Romney for not supporting even civil unions. It uses George W. Bush (!) saying he supports civil unions, and hits Romney for supporting a constitutional amendment to forestall marriage equality. “President Obama is moving us forward,” the ad concludes. “Mitt Romney would take us back.” Meanwhile, Republican leaders are trying desperately to avoid talking about marriage.
But this story is not going to go away, at least not for the next few days. Because guess where Mitt Romney is scheduled to give a speech tomorrow: Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. It was scheduled some time ago, but in the midst of all this, when Romney keeps saying he wants to talk about the economy, he’s going down to Lynchburg to address an audience of evangelicals, where he’ll of course have to heap praise on Falwell, one of the most divisive culture-war figures this country has ever seen, and of course he’ll have to proclaim his support for “traditional” marriage, and of course he’ll have to talk about abortion, and of course he’ll come off sounding like someone who has to keep proving to the hard right that he’s “severely conservative,” in his own immortal words. And this all comes on the heels of the bullying story. It has been one tough week for the guy.
In honor of Mitt’s appearance at Liberty, I give you this: quite possibly the best hip-hop anthem about an evangelical university ever produced. Critics everywhere said, “Not nearly as awful as I expected!”
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, May 10, 2012
“Keeping The Family Name In Our Faces Forever”: The Palin’s Are Our Punishment Forever
There was good news and bad news for Sarah Palin in the self-consciously ridiculous Public Policy Polling survey of Iowans for their preferences in the 2016 presidential contest (I mean, Caucus campaigning starts pretty damn early, but not this early!). On the one hand, she has an impressive 70/17 favorable/unfavorable rating among Iowa Republicans. On the other hand, only 10% of them chose her as their 2016 presidential favorite, tied for fourth with Jeb Bush.
But there’s fresh evidence that Palin’s real motive in life, other than continuing to pose as the ultimate pain-free martyr, is to keep the family name in our faces for, well, as long as any of us live. And it’s on that depressing note that I observe in terror that Bristol Palin is back in the news as a political blogger.
Yes, on the day after the president’s announcement of support for same-sex marriage, Alaska’s best known sexual abstinence advocate/unwed mother is lighting up conservative browsers everywhere with an attack on Obama for paying attention to his daughters’ opinions.
If you have your blood pressure under control, you can read the whole mess, but her train of logic seems to be that everybody gets all alarmed by the possibility that Christian women might submit to their husbands if they run for public office, and here’s The One submitting to his daughters, and everybody thinks that’s just fine!
I got angry enough about Bristol’s planted axiom that only conservative Republican women like Michele Bachmann (and presumably Bristol’s own mother) are “Christians” that I barely made it to the second howler. Not that she is listening, but someone really ought to inform her that people wondered about Bachmann submitting to her husband because she was repeatedly on record saying that’s exactly what she did, as a matter of Divine Law. Lots of Dominionist-influenced Christian Nationalists say and think that, you betcha! The questions did not come out of the blue.
While they are at it, Ms. Palin’s interlocuters might want to explain to her that when discussing same-sex marriage as something of a generational issue, it was rather natural for Obama to mention the views of immediate family members from a younger generation! I mean, they are right there at the White House; he didn’t have to hire a pollster or anything!
To be clear, I am not mocking Bristol Palin when I offer these responses. She has the last laugh on me, and on all of us. Like her mother, she has a knack of luring people who know better into paying attention to her rants. In my defense, I’ll say that some of Sarah Palin’s most casual, fact-free rants have wound up in national GOP talking points, leading millions of anxious seniors to believe that the President of the United States wants to have them euthanized. It’s sometimes best to get a head start on Palin-generated nonsense, or in this case, on the next generation of Palins.
By: Ed Kilgore, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, May 10, 2012
“If Obama’s Fer It, I’m Agin’ It”: Obama’s Embrace Of Marriage Equality Is Very Smart Politics
In the case of Mitt Romney, when it comes to civil rights issues, he is not his father’s son.
His dad was a good guy—as Michigan’s governor, he marched for civil rights, embraced women’s rights and helped labor unions to obtain fairer treatment at the bargaining table in Michigan—and it was always reasonable to hope that the kid would inherit at least some honorable qualities.
But Mitt Romney’s response to President Obama’s announcement of support for marriage equality has been so tone deaf and exploitive that I suspect even George Romney would be disappointed in the kid. The presumptive Republican nominee for president says: “I do not favor marriage between people of the same gender, and I do not favor civil unions if they are identical to marriage other than by name.” And his campaign has indicated that it intends to make a big deal about the president’s shift in stance. Romney’s senior adviser, Ed Gillespie, says the Romney camp is prepared to campaign on the issue of enacting a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.
So one of the wealthiest and most elite men ever to seek the presidency of the United States will campaign on a promise to use the constitution of the United States to bar equal protection under the law.
This is not the way Romneys used to respond to the march of social progress.
When President John Kennedy clearly and unequivocally embraced the civil rights cause—by very publicly inviting the organizers of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom to the White House—George Romney was the rising star of the Republican Party and a potential rival to Kennedy. Yet, he hailed the president for doing the right thing. Indeed, he prodded Kennedy to do a bit more.
Mitt Romney, on the other hand, seems to be in the “If Obama’s fer it, I’m agin’ it” camp. And there are no signs that he will try to guide his Republican Party toward a moderate stance on what remains a hot-button social issues. Which, of course, explains why President Obama is likely to win the 2012 election over the lesser Romney.
Obama’s embrace of marriage equality, while typically tortured and over-cautious, was entirely appropriate morally.
It was also VERY smart politics.
National polling shows that most Americans favor marriage equality, but there remains a solid 45 percent that is opposed.
On the surface, that might seem like a serious concern for a politician who would prefer to be liked to everybody—or, at the least, most everybody.
But presidential politics is not a national affair. It is a series of state elections. And opposition to marriage equality is disproportionally concentrated in the south, border states and the interior west—where Obama is never going to win.
There are also pockets of significant opposition in some battleground states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania. But, again, the most fervent foes of same-sex marriage have a lot of other problems with Obama. So his shift in stance is not pushing away many voters. Even among the older voters of Florida, who may not be all that comfortable with “the love that dare not speak its name” speaking its name, there are other priorities—like keeping Romney and Paul Ryan from bartering off Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
So Obama’s not risking much by endorsing same-sex marriage. But he is gaining a lot.
The greatest challenge for Obama’s 2012 reelection strategy is—or, perhaps we should say, “was”—a lack of enthusiasm among the young voters who got so excited about his 2008 campaign. And young voters like marriage equality, a lot. It polls over 70 percent, according to Gallup. Indeed, polling suggests that, among all the Republican Party stances that most trouble young voters, it is the GOP’s opposition to LGBT rights that most unsettled them.
Smart Republicans, and there really are quite a few of them, recognize this reality.
That’s why the party’s LGBT wing—and, yes, there are gay and lesbian Republicans—is objecting so loudly to Mitt Romney’s morally and politically inappropriate response to Obama’s statement.
Marriage equality has captured the nation’s attention, and the response to President Obama’s announcement is evidence of the tide turning in favor of equality for all. Log Cabin Republicans have long believed that supporting the freedom to marry is the right thing to do and the president’s joining this effort is in the nation’s best interest. That said, Americans can be certain that the president would not have made this decision at this time if it were not in his best political interests. In addition to energizing his base and distracting attention from a failed economic record, the trap is laid for any Republican who responds with intolerance,” said R. Clarke Cooper, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans. “Already some in the GOP are taking the bait with former RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie bringing up the twice-failed Federal Marriage Amendment and the unfortunate vote on Representative Heulskamp’s (R-KS) amendment re-affirming DOMA last night. Democrats are eager to fundraise off of this issue. It is in the best interests of Republican candidates to be measured and disciplined in response, recognizing that a generational shift has occurred.”
The Log Cabin Republicans are not always right.
But they are right on this issue. As Cooper says, “Governor Mitt Romney’s statement in opposition to not just marriage but civil unions jeopardizes his ability to win moderates, women and younger voters, especially as a large majority of Americans favor some form of relationship recognition for their LGBT friends and neighbors. Ultimately, the response of the Republican candidates this election cycle will determine not just endorsements by Log Cabin Republicans, but the votes of millions of Americans who are simply tired of the culture wars.”
Unlike George Romney, who embraced the future and urged his party to do the same, Mitt Romney is not just clinging to the past. He is presiding over a campaign and a party that appears to be intent on pretending that this is 1912, as opposed to 2012. That miscalculation is explains why the the Obama camp is so enthusiastically highlighting the president’s new position—and why savvy Republicans are so fretful.
By: John Nichols, The Nation, May 10, 2012
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