A couple of weeks ago, a friend alerted me to a report about a “pair of liberal super PACs are teaming up on a new Web campaign that accuses Mitt Romney of advancing an ‘extreme anti-LGBT agenda’ that would make life worse for gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans.”
Those who run the “Courage Campaign Super PAC and American Bridge 21st Century” seem a lot like certain social conservatives who believe that politicians can undo the social change of the past quarter-century. Those on the left fear the election of Republicans because they contend Republicans are dedicated to undermining that change. Meanwhile, social conservatives wish to use the GOP as a vehicle to undermine it.
While Mitt Romney has come out in favor of the a constitutional amendment defining marriage, there is no likelihood that such an amendment could muster the necessary two-thirds majority in either house of Congress as the first step toward ratification.
Not just that, as per her comments in January during he ABC/Yahoo!/WMUR New Hampshire GOP primary debate, the presumptive Republican nominee doesn’t seem to have adopted social conservatives attitudes on gay issues. Instead, he offered that it was “a wonderful thing” for “gay people to form loving, committed, long-term relationships”:
. . . and that there’s every right for people in this country to form long- term committed relationships with one another. That doesn’t mean that they have to call it marriage or they have to receive the — the approval of the state and a marriage license and so forth for that to occur.
There can be domestic partnership benefits or — or a contractual relationship between two people, which would include, as — as Speaker Gingrich indicated, hospital visitation rights and the like. We can decide what kinds of benefits we might associate with people who form those kind of relationships, state by state.
Doesn’t sound like a man who wants to work hard to stop the social and political change that has lead to increased corporate and state recognition of same-sex relationships. And bear in mind, the now-presumptive Republican nominee made these comments at the outset of the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination when social conservative opposition to his candidacy could have had a more devastating effect than it could in the fall campaign.
To cast Mitt Romney as some kind of demon dedicated to making things worse for gay Americans as are these liberal super PACs is to ignore his record and his record. Romney may be wrong on state recognition of our unions, but has demonstrated no animus toward gay people.
Not just that, in the course of his campaign, he has made clear his focus will be economic. To help fix the problems he will inherit should he win reelection, Romney won’t have time to devote to gay issues. Nor does his governing and campaign rhetoric show that he has an interest in expending the effort, e.g., appealing to the public and lobbying legislators, to change minds on gat marriage.
No, alas, election of Mitt Romney will not mean the federal government will, as it should, recognize same-sex unions, but then the election of Barack Obama back in 2008 didn’t do anything to effect that recognition.
Wait just a doggone minute! You mean the Republicans AREN’T gonna round up the gheys and ship them off to concentration camps? Oh, they’ll be FABULOUS concentration camps, to be sure, but still concentration camps.
If this keeps up, I’m going to have to rethink my support for Romney.
Even the passage of an FMA would not stop same-sex couples (and triples and polygons) from forming committed relationships.
But it is important, I guess, for the Obamacrats to keep the gay left worked up about this issue so they won’t notice the country is collapsing around them. In a powerless and bankrupt USA, not getting a marriage license will be the least of their worries.
V – no, but an FMA would stop those couples and their families from having legal and financial protections available to straight couples. Little things like tax benefits and social security and inheritance matter to many people.
V made a great point recently. Leftists continually use a “camel’s nose under the tent” strategy to push their extreme, destructive goals. They propose an incremental change which begins acclimating people to the Left’s desired extreme change, and as well, which creates disruptions (or perverse outcomes) where the Left can jump in and offer the next incremental change as an alleged “solution”. On and on and on, until the Left’s extreme goal is achieved.
And also, leftists project a lot. They continually assume that the Right must be guilty of leftists’ own failings, and then some.
Therefore: leftists assume that rightists are all about using a “camel’s nose under the tent” strategy to push extreme, destructive goals.
Thus: Voicing support for an amendment to keep marriage defined the way it has been defined in America for hundreds of years is, in the eyes of the Left, indeed tantamount to gay death camps. Because, if the Left were to want gay death camps, that’s just how the Left would begin it.
The gay left is like a 4 year old… when you disagree with them, they scream, “I hate you!!” and stomp out of the room . They are afraid of so many boogie men it is hard to keep track of them all.
Then civil unions is the total and complete answer.
Why the stubborn insistence on “marriage” instead? Enforced political correctness instead of earned respect?
And what is the factual “origin” of the “families” of gays and lesbians?
Biology?
When gays and lesbians demand “marriage” equality, it is a “given” that the possibility of buying a child from sources elsewhere is an automatic enhancement to the sanity of the argument.
This type of demagoguery brings out the worst (in terms of political correctness) in me.
My suggestion is that gays and lesbians sell their case in China, India, Iran, Spain, Russia, Chile, Korea, Japan, and Iceland first and then shame the U.S into going along with the epiphany.
Wait, I thought that since Obama evolved, this issue was solved!
Anyway…the marriage amendment is a total non-starter, Bush knew it, Romney knows it.
The most equalizing thing done for any family unit, gays, siblings, noncommittal cohabitational pairs, in the last 30 years was the elimination of the Estate Tax. Thank you President Bush. And between Obama and Romney, who do you think’s going to get that back.
The next most important equality barrier is adoption rights.
A contract defined by the Legislature defining my personal relationship? No thanks.
Not enough to — you know — change the tax code.
Classic example: health benefit taxes. It would be a matter of changing a few lines in the tax code to allow you to cover a single non-spousal beneficiary without having to pay imputed income as you do now. It would be exactly the same as the Republicans already did in the Pension Protection Act of 2006, which for the first time let people designate a non-spousal beneficiary to be able to receive remaining balances in tax-advantaged retirement accounts (401(k)s, IRAs) without penalty.
But the Obama Party won’t let it happen. And gay leftists like hmmm_contrib scream and cry and refuse to even consider the notion.
So basically, hmmm_contrib, if you cared, you would be going after your Obama Party to get rid of the estate tax. But you’re not. So you don’t care about “benefits”; you’re just using those as an excuse to play victim.
I’m really impressed with the ease that the liberal gays and braindead liberals get riled up. What Romney says makes sense.
I’m straight and I don’t want to get married but if I find someone I want to grow old with, I’d like for them to be able to pull the plug on me if I’m hit by a bus. The key is committed relationship. Nothing is stopping anyone from forming a committed relationship with anyone else and that gets lost in the “ZOMG GOP HATES GHEYS” nonsense.
Excellent point about the tax code, NDT. I always find it ironic that the gay left spends so much time whining about advantages given to straight couples in the tax code as being “soooo unfair.” Well, yes, I’m inclined to respond: simplify the tax code, let people designate whatever beneficiaries they wish for things like inheritance, eliminate confiscatory estate taxes, and suddenly a lot of these complaints would disappear. Conservatives would happily support those sorts of reforms. Why won’t the left?
Your diversionary comments about the estate tax (because you dont want to talk about the actual issue), ND30, don’t address the differences in current law and how it treats married straight versus domestic partnered/civil unioned gay couples. And a magical fix to estate law does not handle things like survivor benefits (social security, military), child and family support, etc.
And, helio, what you’re advocating is separate but equal. That never works, unless you have examples to the contrary?
I like the fact that everywhere you read from the famed gay orgs that gay people are richer, better educated, richer and so much better than the rest of the breeders (did I say richer?). But at the same time they desperately need the pension of the deceased partner, tax benefits, housing rights and what not.
If I were that rich and that super-smart I wouldn’t need concessions from the inferiors heterosexuals.
How could it get any worse for the homosexual/bisexual population after the European Court of Human Rights rejected the social activism of the APAs/ABA and the Swedish model regarding homosexual marriage and adoption in the interest of children utilizing replicable, empirical data? It appears all efforts will be concentrated on outing homosexual/bisexual court officers/jurists to prevent further collusion to impose homosexual marriage within the courts without legitimate reason other than passive-aggressive moaning and groaning.
Barack Obama – gay marriage, illegal immigrants, welfare expansion, endless massive deficits, tax increases, economic decline, regulatory overreach, and environmental extremism.
Mitt Romney – tax reform, free markets, regulatory restraint, deficit reduction.
The choice is easy; it’s just a matter of priorities.
Liberals like to spout this bumper-sticker slogan, but is it really valid. Are minorities better educated today than they were before desegregation? A quick look at the massive failure of our inner-city schools suggests desegregation is not a panacea.
But, by all mean, keep chanting your empty slogans.
@contrib,
You have the same access to marriage as any other person. How is that discriminatory?
Indeed. Essentially allow self-designated next-of-kin (among other classifications), which is what one of my state legislators is looking into when made aware that the lack of same-gender protections creates issues that have zero to do with fancy certificates and wedding registries.
Enacting changes such as those will go a long way towards making everyone equal, not just those with a Cinderella complex.
True—for anyone not in a heterosexual marriage. But that wouldn’t change for many people even with same-gender marriage. Why should people like Chicago Nick or myself [differently oriented, affectional preference speaking; both legally single] have to get married just in order to insure that whoever is responsible after we get scraped up off the pavement after a fatal accident is who we want, not who the law says it should be? Shouldn’t marriages of convenience truly be a thing of the past?
And things will still be separate and unequal and unworkable for many, long after same-gender marriage is the “law of the land”.
@RSG,
For things like that, POA, Medical POA, Living wills, etc. all are options.
I knew a group that had all their paperwork in a row, actually. And that Donna and I didn’t set up such things, bit me in the aft.
Respectfully, I most definitely am not advocating separate but equal.
My point is that some gays want the state benefits of marriage extended to them as gay couples. Fine. Extend the state benefits applied to hetero couples who are married to gay couples through the state process of civil union.
The gay couple goes down to the court house and files and attests in the exact same manner as signing up for food stamps and some clerk takes the application fee and after some red tape and delay the couple gets a state issued civil union document and all the same benefits of marriage given to heteros is applied to the two individuals in the gay union.
If, however, the gay couple is looking for equality of their civil union in terms of societal respect and sense of “normality” regarding traditional hetero marriage, it can not be legislated or imposed by the state.
So, the whole issue boils down to what are you really after?
I can tell you what the fascist left is after, helio. I don’t know how old you are, but I will be 52 in October. I “came out” in the late 70s / early 80s, and I’ve watched the whiny babies on the left go from “We just want to be tolerated, and left alone…” to “We just want to be accepted, and not feel ashamed…” to what we have now: the temper tantrums and diaper pooping of perpetual adolescents who not only want straight people to ACCEPT them, but they want to be CELEBRATED, EMBRACED and now even want fake “marriages.” It will NEVER stop, folks.Once again, I urge you to look up the Frankfurt School. That’s where all this stuff comes from. And the moment you hear someone say “Critical [insert agrieved interest group] Theory,” realize that you’re dealing with one of these obnoxious cultural marxists, and react accordingly.
Actually, it addresses them directly. I have outlined exactly how to fix the problem you’re whining about, and you refuse to consider it.
And now we come to the center of the shrubbery maze. You don’t want to fix the problem; you’re just using it as an excuse to scream and cry because I won’t give you HOV lane stickers for your Land Rover.
Same difference. Private pension plans have handled this for years; you simply create the concept of a non-spousal beneficiary, which is already in Federal law in the Pension Protection Act of 2006. Amend the Social Security Act to allow non-spousal beneficiaries.
Again, hmm_contrib, this has already been done. It’s perfectly simple. Indeed, you would have Republican support galore for simplifying the tax code, removing the estate tax, and allowing non-spousal beneficiaries, because it benefits ALL people, not just gay couples.
But again, you are not interested. You whine, piss, and complain about these problems, then you flatly refuse any solution.
Therefore, one can only conclude that you are not arguing in good faith — and in fact, you are simply trying to force gay-sex marriage as a solution without any thought whatsoever as to what you’re actually doing, or with ulterior and bigoted motives.
I never understood why “Separate But Equal” was so terrible anyway. If someone said, “I am going to give you and this other fellow each one million dollars, but you have to keep it separate,” I would be totally fine with that.
Only a petulant two-year-old would shriek, “I don’t want *this* million dollars, I want *his* million dollars.”
Old Russian joke,
Two farmers live next to each other. One farmer’s cow dies, but a genie pours from its mouth. “I will grant you any one wish you desire.”
Farmer thinks about it as says “I wish you’d kill my neighbor’s cow.”
Exactly, Bastiat Fan.
Next step: hmm_contrib screaming that if you don’t give him welfare checks for being gay, you are a homophobe.
We already have bigot Obama Party lesbian Christine Quinn writing, on official letterhead and stating “as Speaker of the New York City Council” in the first sentence, ordering a private university to expel a private business that she doesn’t like and insisting that, if you do not give her her way, you are a homophobe and a bigot.
There is no end, because these people are not acting out of any sort of principle. They are pure power-seekers, wannabe fascists who will use any trick in the book to get what they want. And they are hypocrites, as we see from the bigot gay left’s refusal to say anything about or criticize their Obama Party endorsing and supporting the Nation of Islam, which not only opposes gay-sex marriage, but calls for gays to be executed.
No…it’ll just get really worse by having another president (after a 4 year break) who’s only interested in protecting and increasing the wealth of the richest americans and thumbing their nose at the majority of citizens.
If it is based on race, then it is just racism. Of course, what it was replaced with was even worse (except for leftists).
Do you seriously believe this bullsh*t? Wow.
Translation: Kevin might have to go to work himself instead of sitting at home in his diaper mooching off the work of others.
The reason Obama supporters like Kevin scream “you didn’t build that”, just like their Choom Prince, is because a) truly, they have never worked or built anything themselves and b) they’re trying to shame those who did into handing it over.
No more.
I just read my comment again, and it looks funny. Replace “except for leftists” with “but not for leftists.” That is, things got better for leftists when they replaced “separate but equal” with the thing they replaced it with (i.e. giving black people handouts because they aren’t capable of succeeding alongside white people).