I don’t want to get in the middle of the fight between Jamison Foser and Marc Ambinder. There just might be a little nitpicking going on. But I do want to comment on something Ambinder said in defense of Republicans that campaign against gay rights.
Many GOP strategists – most of the major names – and virtually all of the ones who work regularly in DC – are personally sympathetic to gay rights, although they often use the issue against gays, because that’s how Republicans get elected in Republican areas. These strategists are cynical, yes, and they’re not morally committed to the cause. They’re more like alcoholics who failed rehab, they can’t help themselves. That’s what reporting suggests.
Ambinder really needs to self-edit. Under a charitable interpretation of what he meant, he should have said that Republicans use the issue of gay rights against Democrats, not gays. That would make a kind of sense if Republicans were only using the issue of gay rights against Democrats because they felt it was necessary to win elections and do all the other important and vital things that they actually do believe in. After all, the Democrats use a variant of this when they support an incremental approach to gay rights. Most Democrats probably believe in gay marriage, but even Obama only went so far as to endorse civil unions. Why? Because he feared that coming out for gay marriage would provide enough ammunition and distraction and incentive to the GOP base to possibly derail his candidacy. It wasn’t personal. Obama didn’t mean to offend gays. But he was only willing to put so much on the line over that one issue.
Democrats from FDR to Kennedy made similar calculations during the Civil Rights Era. Of course, there is a big difference between slow walking the expansion of civil rights when you believe in their expansion and obstructing the expansion of civil rights despite believing that they should be expanded. One approach might be practical, the other can only be cynical. But Ambinder grants us that much.
In any case, the whole topic got me thinking. How many other issues that the Republicans espouse are they not ‘morally committed’ to? How much of the Gods, Gays, and Guns agenda is really sincerely felt by ‘most of the [GOP] major names – and virtually all of the ones who work regularly in DC’?
This isn’t just a cynical exercise. Riling people up about God, Gays, and Guns is dangerous. People get hurt. Some people get killed. Gay people live under constant threat and disapproval. You can’t be for gay rights if you are inflicting discomfort and terror on gays. At least, you can’t be if we are operating in a normal universe. The GOP, however, operates in a some parallel version of our own.
