Duncan and I used to talk about this phenomenon back when we made it a habit to meet with friends for drinks every Tuesday night. It’s the tendency of conservatives (including Darth Cheney) to drop their opposition to something (or learn to support something) the second it affects them personally.
So, for example, abortion is the equivalent of Auschwitz until your daughter hands you her acceptance letter to Harvard and announces that her deadbeat boyfriend got her pregnant so she can’t go and she’ll raise the baby herself. Funding for special education is a boondoggle until your kid turns out to have Asperger’s Syndrome. Global warming is a myth until a superstorm destroys your Jersey Shore vacation home. Unemployment insurance is a giveaway to people who lack initiative until you lose your job and can’t find another one. And homosexuality is a sinful lifestyle choice until your 19 year old son announces that he’s gay.
I applaud Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio’s announcement that he now supports gay marriage, but I don’t like that he feels it necessary to use his son as an excuse. I mean, okay, your experience with your son is what changed your mind, but you don’t have to share that with everyone. The key is that you have a principled position that has changed. All you have to do is explain your new position.
Let me give an example of why this matters. Dick Cheney’s daughter Mary is a lesbian. The former vice-president explicitly endorsed gay marriage four years ago, shortly after he left office, and he claims that he supported gay marriage even back in 2000 but didn’t say so because he thought it would sink Bush’s chance to get elected. Now, Dick Cheney is the most hard-core conservative figure of the last decade, and it should have been a very significant event when he endorsed gay marriage. But it wasn’t really seen as a big deal because it was understood that he was really just supporting his daughter.
Sometimes I feel like a Republican who wants to support gay marriage needs to get one of their kids to fake being gay so that they can have permission to buck the party line.
It’s a damn shame that none of these Republican politicians have poor kids.
it changes the mind and attitude to have the personal contact with the issue. Portman gets credit from me.
There are PLENTY of examples of total shits who harden their hearts and turn their children away when they come out. That’s why coming out is so difficult. Take the daughter of that massive piece of crap Alan Keyes. He found out that his daughter was a lesbian, and cut all ties. In our church (we are unitarian-universalist, and our church welcomes all those of differing sexual preference, although I know of no U-Us in favor of pedophilia which I don’t support), a woman who is in a committed lesbian relationship came out last weekend, and her conservative parents just cut her off.
Acceptance happens, but it is not always the outcome. I wonder what Portman would have done were he a private citizen.
I can give him credit as a father but not as a senator. He has responsibilities far more extensive than his family. If that is the breadth and depth of his empathy, then he’s got a helluva lot more to consider.
These are leaders that make daily decisions that save or take away lives. Needless deaths due to lack of healthcare, hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq…
fuck him and fuck his stupid son too.
i have had enough of the selfishness.
Of course, as a long time supporter of gay marriage, I’m going to take the win on this and be happy with the end result. It is quite the story this morning here in our area.
One comment I made on the local newspaper site here this morning was similar to your thoughts. It seems like it is just impossible for conservatives to be able to express empathy until an issue directly affects them. They never seem to embrace issues like this simply because it is the right and the humane thing to do. They always have to be dragged, kicking and screaming, across the line. We see it on a whole host of issues. Things such as mental health issues and treatment, gun safety, gay marriage, medical research funding, Medicaid. No one seems to give a flying fuck about any of these until it hits home.
Conservatives like to joke that “a liberal is a conservative who hasn’t been mugged yet”, but it seems that the reality is exactly the opposite.
Here in Ohio there is a lot very passionate discussion among gay rights groups and their supporters as to exactly when an attempt should be made for a referendum to overturn the State’s ban on same sex marriage. There is a lot of strong disagreement between the two largest gay rights organizations on the proper strategy and timeline to pursue on this. Portman has also said that he would support overturning that ban, should it come to a referendum. I think that statement is huge here in the state. The Portman name is highly respected in Ohio. I know here in my area, he pretty much enjoys universal support. So I don’t think we can underestimate the potential impact of his changing view here in our state, especially among his fellow Republicans.
First example I can recall hearing, was a Gov of CT that eliminated the tolls on I95, after his daughter was killed: waiting at the toll booth when someone plowed into the back of the line.
I look forward to Paul Ryan’s newfound empathy, when he’s broke, homeless, and dying of cancer without health insurance. Speed the day!
You do know that the Zombie-eyed Granny-starver wouldn’t be where he is today with out those programs, right? So he’s already had first-hand experience yet wants to punish others.
Just like the ghetto, the persistence of undomented workers, and the outskirts of a Southern town, the closet exists for a reason. And that reason is generally exploitation and hypocrisy. Think of the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, and the obsession with homosexuals as security risks during the Cold War. Think of all the homophobe ministers who have been outed by their indiscretions. Think of the Roman Catholic hierarchy.
Here’s a new twist on the old joke about religion;
Jews refuse to recognise Jesus as the Messiah,
Protestants refuse to recognise the Pope as the leader of Christianity,
and the Baptists refuse to recognise each other at the local gay bar.
Rep seem to have only one way of getting information; To experience it personally at which moment they get it. But because curiosity and empathy aren’t a part of their world, opinions fill the void and life is blissfully simplistic.
IL Senator Kirk recently mentioned he had more empathy for medicaid patients after seeing what they went through during his hospitalization.
It’s all too little too late. The office demands broader empathy – and like now. Kirk had none for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis to die in his war. None of them care enough to stop the sequester and leave programs serving the poor intact.
Well no, he doesn’t exactly deserve a Nobel Peace Prize here, but it’s still a positive development. I’m not inclined to be too hard on people when they come over to positions I support.
At any rate, one announcement isn’t really the thing. There’s more to supporting marriage equality than just saying you support it, after all. The real test of his sincerity is how much he’s willing to do to promote marriage equality. So I do regard him as being on probation here, but I’m willing to give him a chance.
It must have been agonizing to be unable to make a law that only applied to his family. Then he could have had what he wanted and still stay true to the reactionary wisdom. I’m sure the GOP will find a way to fix that. In the meantime he can feel all virtuous as he continues to shit on all the folks who didn’t make it into his walled “community”.
Empathy… How the fuck does that work?
they should get NO CREDIT for being a decent parent.
Well, it’s perhaps a bit lucky for the worthy extremist Portman that his son turns out to be gay just as his state starts solidly trending Blue and sane, ha-ha.
What’s interesting is what sort of an intellectual process, what sort of analytical ability is involved, when one’s (supposedly rationally considered) political position turns 180 degrees overnight based on some random personal experience, an experience which has already happened to millions of other people who just don’t happen to be part of your nuclear family. I guess I’m saying that whatever Portman’s prior hatred of powerless gays was based on, it’s interesting it changes completely when the issue suddenly directly affects his family. What kind of an objective political “philosophy” generates such behavior?
Also interesting is that, on this issue, one cannot become a RINO, apparently. Head conserva-turd Cheney did not lose his American Fascist credentials just because he had a gay child and admitted to “supporting” gay marriage (whatever the hell Cheney ever did to “support” it is a mystery to me…) Or was this a special “Cheney-only” dispensation and is Portman now a RINO at the CPAC conference?
Global warming presents a little different problem vis-a-vis future position-changing by RINOs because the consequences of their current denial are irreversible. Some day in the not so far-off future, an enormous ice sheet on Greenland is simply going to slip off the island, and raise sea levels overnight. We are already certain to have catastrophic warming of 2 degree F as a result of the professional denial machine that is the American “conservative” movement.
Having braindead “conservatives” drop their denial at the point when, say, Greenland melts down is meaningless and not to be praised. No one will be admitting their denialism at that point. Just like there were never any Nazis in Germany as of June 1945.
OT: Legislative lemmings!
DC’s Worst-Kept Budget Secret: Lots Of Democrats Support Entitlement Cuts
There goes 2014, idiots.
Way worse than idiots. Beneath contempt.
I would simply be encouraged that maybe, just maybe, a few more closeted sons and daughters will have the nerve to out to their conservative parents, and maybe, just maybe, change their damned fool stubborn minds. The alternative is more generations of repressed individuals.
The conservative worldview doesn’t seem to be so reliably impacted by much of anything else, so if that’s what it takes, so be it. There is a lack empathy to such a degree they have to experience something personally to understand the issues facing those that experience them.
Ultimately, lacking empathy really is not the ideal mentality to have in someone representing the public. But yet we do have them representing us, and we can only hope personal experience beats the 2×4 up the sides of their block heads.
I’m not gay myself, but do know many who are, and many parental reactions are very negative. It’s not easy to do this.
Yes, I’m aware of that. But there is risk to everything in life, and rejection by your parents is not the worst thing that can happen to you. Spending a life being someone you are not would be worse, in my opinion.
It brings to mind that great Frank Zappa quote about doing what you want to do instead of what your everyone else tells you to do.
I don’t get the impression that sociopathy can get fixed in any significant way by personal experience. Portman will just find that pissing on the rest of the “other” has become even more orgasmic, and thus redouble his effort.
It’s just because Republicans lack empathy. They don’t have the intelligence or imagination or are too egotistical to be able to put themselves in someone else’s shoes so until they get personal experience forget about them understanding anything else.
I’m glad Portman reversed himself, and don’t discount the impact. Gay marriage is still illegal federally and in most US states. It’s not a settled issue legally, even if it increasingly is culturally. And as many have said, Portman’s response to his son could easily have been far worse.
But that doesn’t give him or any other Republican who pivots due to personal circumstance a pass, nor does it say anything very interesting about their character – especially as their complete lack of empathy continues on every issue that hasn’t impacted them personally.
I’ll be way more impressed if some Republican politician comes out in support of gay marriage because his wife has announced that she’s gay.
Screw Portman. I’ll save my admiration when he comes out and publicly apologizes for all the injury he’s visited upon so many others who were not “his” family.
Portman is a prime example of the bright red line that defines the current Republican: if it’s me or mine, Libertarian and limitless welfare all the way. If it’s the Other, repression and austerity all the way.
That’s all they have in their red white and blue totebags. Unfortunately the Dems keep trying to steal their totebags all all the time.
I think Charles Pierce says it better than I could on the Rob Portman…”my son is gay” epiphany on gay rights.
ROB PORTMAN DISCOVERS DECENCY
In the teabagger hypocrisy contest, today’s winner is Stephen Katz, NY state assemblyman.
Stopped for speeding – so, he was busted for two crimes. Then there was this:
A majority of voters in Katz’ district chose this sleazebag.