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A key architect of Republican Sen. John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign has urged conservatives to drop their opposition to same-sex marriage.
In a speech Friday to Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative gay rights group, Steve Schmidt said allowing same-sex marriage is in line with the conservative credo of keeping government out of people’s private lives.
“There is a sound conservative argument to be made for same-sex marriage,” Schmidt, who was McCain’s campaign manager, told the group. “I believe conservatives, more than liberals, insist that rights come with responsibilities. No other exercise of one’s liberty comes with greater responsibilities than marriage. In a marriage, two people are completely responsible to and for each other.”
He added: “If you are not willing to accept and faithfully discharge those responsibilities, you shouldn’t enter the state of matrimony, and it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference if you’re straight or gay. It is a responsibility like no other, which can and should make marriage an association between two human beings more fulfilling than any other…”
So what will change Republicans’ mindset?
“One of the things that has definitely impacted my views on these issues and an evolution of thought over time is having a gay sibling,” Schmidt told CNN. “As Americans get to know gay couples and or have gay family members, or work associates … they come to understand that these relationships are deep and worth being respect and being protected.”
This would take leadership from the top. Don’t hold your breath, waiting?
Does anyone honestly think this issue is the one that cost McCain the election? I don’t think so.
Good news yet more evidence that the Republican party is struggling to be a relevant party for survival. Right wing wackos like Alfred1 are an albatross on their necks that they struggle to deal with.
Instead of the public embracing the “new found tolerance” of this bigoted party, I say perform the Coup de gras now while they are gasping for air by taxing the Church immediately. Next, force the Vatican to pay restitution for centuries of death, torture and destruction.
As we all know this guy is a loser and failure – literally – and should not be listened to.
So as a conservative I am supposed to listen to the man that ran one of the worst presidential campaigns in history, like this fool has any idea on how to get some one elected
We need to get back to real conservatism smaller govt, lest govt spending, lower taxes and more state and local control
we don’t need liberal light that is what got us Obama who is quickly looking to surpass Jimmy Carter as the worth thing ever to happen to this country
Taking advice from anyone associated with politics is like trying to type on this bass-ackwards text box.
You couldn’t have come up with a better way to screw up your site if you were trying.
PMitchell,
You just said what we need very concisley “real conservatism smaller govt, lest govt spending, lower taxes and more state and local control ”
Gay marriage is “who gives a crap” issue. It matter so little compared to the important things no noe should care one way ofr the other.
Dvorak – please put your old theme back on this blog. The new comment editor is making me cheese my shorts.!!!
Toxic
it is sad that you think the civil rights of millions of americans is a who gives a crap issue
Very sad
Where are the entry indexes?
And people are right . . . the right hand side stuff has got to go! I feel like I am trying to write with my left hand.
Echeola, I thing what Toxic means is it shouldn’t matter to Republicans. If they intend to return to true Repubican ideals of small gov, more freedom and personal reposnsibility, then Gay marriage should be pretty low down on ther list.
The campaign manager is right. Good old fashioned “Goldwater” conservatism is more in tune with libertarian social values. Goldwater was pro-choice, and probably would not oppose gay marriage if the issue would have come up during his lifetime.
how a person chooses to have sex is a choice what color a person is is not a choice i do not believe the two should be considered the same
>Good old fashioned “Goldwater” conservatism is more in tune with libertarian social values. Goldwater was pro-choice, and probably would not oppose gay marriage if the issue would have come up during his lifetime.
Don’t let facts get in the way of a good argument. Goldwater was not a social liberal.
Who said, “Is this the time in our nation’s history for our federal government to ban Almighty God from our classrooms?” Or, “You will search in vain for any reference to God or religion in the Democratic platform”? Who lamented that “we permit the world’s greatest collection of smut to be freely available anywhere”? Who warned that, “We as a nation are not far from the kind of moral decay that has brought on the fall of other nations and people”?
“The laws of God, and of nature, have no dateline”
Theodore White, that great (liberal) chronicler of American politics, wrote in his 1964 classic The Making of the President that Goldwater’s “greatest contribution to American politics” was the legitimization of what Goldwater called “the moral issue”: “This will be his great credit in historical terms: that finally he introduced the condition and quality of American morality and life as a subject of political debate.”
And of course at the time liberals compared Goldater to Hitler too.
Take key advice from a major loser. Check
Schmidt is so right but for the balance of the GOP
Homophobia all the way
Not wanting to let the Islamic Extremist dogma on gays rain supreme they made this into an ideological plank their platform.
Civil Rights
Not for everyone homosexuality Very Bad! Jesus never said so but they think that’s only because nobody asked him. You’d think there all knowing god would have foreseen that it might come up in the next few millennia and pointed out his post-Jesus views. They seem happy to just use the cut and paste snippets of pre-Jesus books like Leviticus to say what they want and omit what is no longer in style. Dems mostly seem happy with what they think Jesus did tell Luke in 6:37 “Judge not and you will not be judged; condemn not and you will not be condemned; forgive and you will be forgiven”
Strangely the party of less government wants the government to define marriage for them instead of their churches. I guess it’s hard to think with a cross up your butt.
WW_bobdobbs_D says, “You’d think there all knowing god would have foreseen that it might come up in the next few millennia and pointed out his post-Jesus views.”
You would think that the destruction of two cities filled with perverts is enough proof of what God thinks about homosexuality without much else being said. Still there are always a few simpletons that never understand the big picture.
WW_bobdobbs_D says:
“I guess it’s hard to think with a cross up your butt.”
I don’t know. Is it hard for you to think with your boyfriends up yours?
Q) Why should anyone listen to the guy who led one of the worst presidential campaigns in memory?
A) Because he’s right on this one.
frogman said
“destruction of two cities filled with perverts”
Old Testament stuff if you are not going to take all of the Old Testament don’t pick and choose only what you are comfortable with, that would be being a hypocrite. Your Jesus is not weigh in on this one no matter how you twist the so called divinely interpreted gospels, HE told you to not judge that was for our God to do not you. Careful you judging like this might just be your ticked to hell.
web says:
WW_bobdobbs_D says: “I guess it’s hard to think with a cross up your
butt.”
“I don’t know. Is it hard for you to think with your boyfriends up yours?”
Oh sorry no boyfriends just a wife, my butt is empty thanks for thinking of it. Do you spend a lot of time thinking about boyfriends and butts? Curious
I have no belief in the existence of your God and no belief in the non-existence of your God guess I’m just an Agnostic wondering why the party of less government is so interested in having the State tell the churches what marriage is. The State should honor all civil unions equally to do anything less would be a form of minority discrimination. If you need your marriage affirmed by your vision of God find a church that will tell you they way YOU are living is A-OK.
Now why do you care what people you will never meet think marriage is? And remember your Jesus told you not to be judging.
Really you could win back a lot of votes if you would get back to the real conservative values and let the freedom of/from religion thing work itself out.
said allowing same-sex marriage is in line with the conservative credo of keeping government out of people’s private lives.
He’d have a point if he was arguing against sodomy laws. But this isn’t about keeping government out of people’s private lives. It is gays demanding that their relationships be recognized as marriages, which they are not.
Why not MikeN?
Looks to me like he is arguing in favor Civil Rights for all.
The idea of Separate but equal(civil unions for gays marriage for straights) went out with other bankrupt ideas like segregation.
What gives you the right to define marriage for anyone but yourself? The State needs to call it and let it be exactly the same for all couples. If you want a church to define your union beyond that so be it, good for you. That is not a State matter and I don’t think Republicans by there own stated ideals of less government interference should want anything else. That terrible swift sword has two sharp edges and our founding fathers new that it would cut both ways.
Do the GOP leaders have any idea how many votes they have lost from fiscal conservatives who can’t in good conscious vote for their hateful social agenda? John Anderson was the last Republican I voted for in a presidential election and he had to run as an independent to get on the ballot.
WW, what makes you say marriage is for couples? You are asking for a particular definition for state marriages.
So, in CA, one of the most lib states, the majority of voters oppose homo marriage so the Repubs should embrace… Obama opposes, I guess that hurt him greatly…
MikeN
“what makes you say marriage is for couples? You are asking for a particular definition for state marriages.”
If you are referring to polygamy the State recognizing relationships of more than two people will complicate many of our property and parental rights laws. I’m open to the discussion of polygamy but I’d want to see a proposal can it be no more disruptive than interracial marriage or gay marriage. It’s a much more complex matter but if you want to make a case for it sell me. I’m open to hearing you on this.
Mormon’s support California’s Proposition 8 is baffling. The group that had to give up on there own definition of marriage to have there Territory become a State is now in the business of defining marriage for the rest of us. I guess what goes around comes around.
Vely intelesting. Repugs are all for gay rights, have a black major big leader of the party, next thing you know they will be voicing concern for individuals who aren’t rich. Guess they will take any steps to get control of the countries wealth back in their own hands.
Dang, a Republican making sense. Wonder if Rush will spank him and force him to come groveling on his show?
But the wingnut response here reassures me that the Republicans will remain the party of hate and very much in the minority.
Good work guys. 🙂
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater#Political_views
After his retirement in 1987, Goldwater described the conservative Arizona Governor Evan Mecham as “hardheaded” and called on him to resign, and two years later stated that the Republican party had been taken over by a “bunch of kooks”. In a 1994 interview with the Washington Post the retired senator said,
“When you say “radical right” today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican party and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.”
And there’s more…
Some of Goldwater’s statements in the 1990s aggravated many social conservatives. He endorsed Democrat Karan English in an Arizona congressional race, urged Republicans to lay off Bill Clinton over the Whitewater scandal, and criticized the military’s ban on homosexuals: “Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar.” He also said, “You don’t have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.” A few years before his death he went so far as to address the right wing, “Do not associate my name with anything you do. You are extremists, and you’ve hurt the Republican party much more than the Democrats have.”
In 1996, he told Bob Dole, whose own presidential campaign received lukewarm support from conservative Republicans: “We’re the new liberals of the Republican party. Can you imagine that?” In that same year, with Senator Dennis DeConcini, Goldwater endorsed an Arizona initiative to legalize medical marijuana against the will of social conservatives.
#13 MikeN Don’t let facts get in the way of a good argument. Goldwater was not a social liberal.
Endorsed Democrats… check
Gays in the military… check
Legalized marijuana… check
Sympathized with Bill Clinton… check
Against right-wing extremists… check
You might want to rethink that statement, Mikey. 🙂
In a speech Friday to Log Cabin Republicans, a conservative gay rights group, Steve Schmidt said allowing same-sex marriage is in line with the conservative credo of keeping government out of people’s private lives.
That may be a conservative credo, but it certainly isn’t a credo of today’s Republican party. They love torture, searches without warrants, holding people indefinitely without charging them with a crime, and deciding what ceremonies other people get to participate in.
Very much a nanny state… well, not nanny, more like thuggish big brother.
Looks like the wingnuts have decided this isn’t a battle worth fighting. Uncharacteristically smart of them.
Run away, wingnuts! 🙂