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Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.)
Last week, former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R) endorsed marriage equality, which seemed like a modest breakthrough. Sure, the failed Republican presidential candidate is to the left of his party's median, but when a high-profile GOP voice announces his support for same-sex marriage, it's evidence of an evolving culture war.
Perhaps more importantly, Huntsman isn't alone. With the U.S. Supreme Court set to hear challenges to the Defense of Marriage Act and California's Prop 8, the number of Republicans willing to endorse marriage equality is suddenly on the upswing.
Dozens of prominent Republicans -- including top advisers to former President George W. Bush, four former governors and two members of Congress -- have signed a legal brief arguing that gay people have a constitutional right to marry. [...]
Among them are Meg Whitman, who supported Proposition 8 when she ran for California governor; Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and Richard Hanna of New York; Stephen J. Hadley, a Bush national security adviser; Carlos Gutierrez, a commerce secretary to Mr. Bush; James B. Comey, a top Bush Justice Department official; David A. Stockman, President Ronald Reagan's first budget director; and Deborah Pryce, a former member of the House Republican leadership from Ohio who is retired from Congress.
As of last night, the list of signers was up to 75 Republicans, including GOP "officials and influential thinkers." The list does not yet include other high-profile Republicans who've publicly expressed support for marriage equality, including former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of State Colin Powell.
The extent to which one is pleased by this is a matter of perspective. Should one see a glass half full or a glass half empty?
The glass-half-full contingent will note that this kind of list would have been largely impossible as recently as a decade ago, and reinforces just how much progress has been made in a very short period of time. The "Republicans for marriage equality" club was infinitesimally small up until very recently, and now it's not.
The glass-half-empty crowd will note that there are 30 sitting Republican governors, and 45 sitting Republican senators, and the grand total of them who signed on to this brief is zero. There are 232 sitting Republican members of the U.S. House, and only two have stepped up to put their names on this list -- 0.8% of the caucus.
Still, from where I sit, given the radicalization of Republican politics in recent years, I'm inclined to embrace progress where I can find it.
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This is a winning issue. Justice Roberts will have to consider this another legacy item. If they go 5 to 4 against gay marriage this will forever haunt him, brand him.
astute observation.
the thing I don't see in this are a lot of people who are Currently in office...these are party members and apparatchiks but not largely actual politicians...
I think this is going to be one of those things where the 2014 midterms are going to be crucial to how far marriage equality (and other issues) go...if the Tea Party holds sway then things will get worse but if they can't overpower people in primaries and end up losing to Democrats and liberals in general elections you are going to see more and more conservatives get on board with things like this.
Richard Hanna of NY is a currently serving GOP member of Congress, and I am glad to say that he has signed on!
I'm glad to see it too...but central New York State isn't exactly the same thing as Central Georgia...but hey you take what you can get right
The GOP, late to the party on all things "controversial", suddenly realized that these "Man on Dog" sex folks also VOTE.
Hummm new Super PAC...Freaks United USA...could work
"Still, from where I sit, given the radicalization of Republican politics in recent years, I'm inclined to embrace progress where I can find it."
Is this progress just for the sake of remaining relevant? That is how I perceive this and to me, it is ungenuine to endorse something in order to not be voted out by the general public. Republicans have a talent for switching out one issue for another but not changing the substance of the argument.
I hope for people to remain honest in who they are, it's just sometimes those qualities aren't conducive for governing.
Ugh I should have just had a sandwich.
Is this progress just for the sake of remaining relevant?
Of course it is. The only thing they fear more than irritating the most reliable in their base (tea party and religious right) is having too small a base to win the next election.
I'm just not buying the detente.
It's got to be a bunch of closet Apocalypse fetishists hoping to pull a fast one with teh Jebus wrath.. It is after all, the 9th century, at least in Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio..
Um, isn't Huntsman a Mormon? That, to me, makes his pro-civil-marriage stand at least as meaningful a departure from "orthodoxy" as its deviation from right-wing Republican radicalism and entrenched anti-gay bigotry.
If Mormons were classified as extreme to moderate, in regular Christianity, Romney would be a Pentacostal Fundamentalist, and Huntsmann would be aMethodist. There are as may levels of Mormons as there are Protestants. I would be willing to bed that Huntsmann doesn't wear the magic underwear , and I would imagine he can't go to Temple. Romney, of course, practically made his life's work loyalty to Mormonism.
I WANT to be encouraged by Huntsman et al, but I'm not.
I guess I'm just a glass half empty guy: I expect next to nothing from Congress and they've never failed me.
Republicans with brains have always been the exception to the rule that proves the rule.
While it's nice to see the GOTP catching up to the real world, if only they could actually live in it for awhile would be better for US all. DOMA is bigoted policy and it's destructive to US as a people. Would that these right-wingnuts actually turn their attention to those issues that should concern US all:
Equal pay
Crumbling infrastructure
Climate change
Energy both conservation & alternative methods
Housing both affordable and of good quality
real meaningful gun legislation
Employment - mainly how to invest to create job growth
Let's start on those things first. Keep your G-d in your house and not in the public sphere. It's called "praying for each other" NOT 'preying on each other"!!
There is no Constitutional argument for the upholding of DOMA. NONE. Will the Supreme Court strike the entire awful mess down? Or will they nibble at it like it's radioactive? Or will they go all Dred Scott on us and uphold Bill Clinton's Folly?
Call me a cynic, but some republicans coming out against DOMA just means a few republicans have learned their lesson, that the majority of Americans are against it, and they lost votes because of their positions. Not sure I buy this as a change of heart.
Wait until SSM is legal everywhere, and no longer demonized by the GOP. You're going to see a avalanche of same-sex unions between Conservatives. They're even going to re-write history, the way they laughingly rewrite the history of the Civil Rights Movement.
We all know the loudest deniers of personal rights are the ones who hate what they see in themselves. The psychology isn't Rocket Science... it's simple human nature of a weak-mind.
At Republican political conventions, they'll seat the two gay couples in the front row, right next to the two black dudes.
Hey, some of my best friends are black/gay!
If even the UN-opposing Ros-Lithanen supports gay marriage... Just imagine what could happen on subjects such as Iran...
Ileana Ros-Lehtinen has actually been a good supporter of LGBT issues. She has an 88% approval from HRC.
What was it about people knowing a gay person that makes them understand the rights and needs of gay people? The Lehtinen's son, Rodrigo is a female to male transgender LGBT advocate/film maker.
Ily was our state rep until we recently got gerrymandered out of her district.
I think it is a crack in a large political GOP dam. But, I agree it is progress. I hope the tide has turned.
I don't know. I'm not sure how much it says about the Republican Party that it's mostly those out of office who have the courage to side with history. Certainly there are those in the GOP who see the need to evolve and who are willing to do so, but the rest of the party (and, more importantly, Republican primary voters) just as certainly don't.
John Huntsman is my favorite Republican. I'm not surprised he's the first one to enter the 21st century. I know him. He likes my band.
Huntsman is a leader. Most of the others in his party do not have the courage to veer from the party line the way he has on a few issues including gay marriage and climate change. His fiscal platform is conservative and sensible and his experience is the most rounded of any candidate who has run in a long time. He would be my pick for 2016.