Thursday, December 20, 2012

Newt Gingrich on Conservatives & Marriage Equality

From Examiner:

I think that this will be much more difficult than immigration for conservatism to come to grips with. It is in every family. It is in every community. The momentum is clearly now in the direction in finding some way to ... accommodate and deal with reality. And the reality is going to be that in a number of American states -- and it will be more after 2014 -- gay relationships will be legal, period.
Three things I want to point out. First, he stopped short of saying he is in favour of marriage equality, he just stated that the reality is that this is most likely going to happen and conservatives need to adjust accordingly. Second, notice how he says "gay relationships will be legal." Technically, gay relationships are already legal. It is same-sex marriages that would be legally recognized. He is still hedging on calling same-sex unions actual marriages.

Third, I remember while he was still running for the GOP nomination months ago that he said same-sex marriage was a temporary aberration, implying that the move towards full equality for same-sex couples would fizzle out. Now he has apparently turned a 180 on that. To be honest, I believe that he was lying about his view in the first instance, trying to get social conservatives on his side in that race. Obviously if he had said they were going to lose in this particular issue, social conservatives would have immediately flocked to another candidate (most likely Santorum). That's the problem with making blatantly false statements when all of the evidence speaks to the contrary: you wind up needing a towel to clean the egg off of your face.

Even given his concession on the marriage issue in this statement, I still find this man loathsome for the reasons laid out here and so very much more (i.e. his serial adultery while banging on about the sanctity of marriage). I get the feeling that it is only a matter of time before he says something in favour of fighting against our goal of marriage equality. The man is anything but trustworthy.

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