In 1996, when Hawaii began talking about equal rights for domestic partners, politicians rushed to enact the Defense of Marriage Act, asserting that states’ authority on a matter traditionally left to their discretion - determining who could be married - would no longer be supported by the federal government. After having invoked states’ rights as a justification for opposing civil rights, social conservatives were eagerly violating states’ rights as a way of undermining gay rights.
While leaders of both parties opposed gay marriage, Republicans made it a centerpiece of their platform, a “wedge issue’’ to keep even those who disagreed with GOP economic and foreign policies voting Republican. In 2004, anti-gay marriage ballot questions in swing states helped bring out voters to back George W. Bush over John Kerry.
Now, a decade and a half after the Defense of Marriage Act was approved, President Obama is no longer defending it, and Republicans sometimes scold him for it. But the clock is ticking, and what was once an out-there position even a decade ago - civil unions for gay couples - is now a conservative alternative to gay marriage. Former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman supports civil unions. Mitt Romney speaks favorably of domestic-partnership benefits, while Newt Gingrich brought up the issue of hospital visitation rights. Even the noted social conservative Rick Santorum stresses his belief that all people, gay or straight, should be treated with dignity.
Intolerance isn’t selling as well as it used to. Democrats, who never made opposition to gay marriage a wedge issue, are moving to embrace it - “evolving,’’ as President Obama puts it. Some Republicans will probably try to harvest all the political benefit from opposing gay marriage, like wringing profits from a dying industry, while trying to sound tolerant enough to avoid offending the mainstream.
Thus, there was Romney at Sunday morning’s debate saying, “If people are looking for someone who will discriminate against gays or will in any way suggest that people that have different sexual orientation don’t have full rights in this country, they won’t find that in me.’’
It’s good to evolve, but far more admirable to recognize the importance of justice and equality in the first place.
