Right-wing anti-gay activists threaten GOP in 2016
- By Mitchell Blatt
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E-mail China.org.cn, October 25, 2014
For years, the U.S. Republican Party has been held together with an alliance between free-market fiscal conservatives and fundamentalist Christian conservatives.
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The US Supreme Court on October 6 effectively legalized same-sex marriage in 11 states. [File photo] |
Now, after a Supreme Court decision legalized gay marriage across the nation, that alliance may be fraying, as Christian conservatives threaten to leave the party.
Mike Huckabee, a former governor and presidential candidate with a strong backing on the Christian right, says that if the Republican Party doesn't continue its fight against gay marriage and abortion, he's out. Republicans ought to say good riddance to Huckabee and his ilk.
Radical Christian conservatives have already hurt the party and cost the Republicans control of the Senate (which they might finally win this November).
The ship has sailed on gay marriage. Multiple federal courts have already ruled that gay marriage is a right protected by the U.S. Constitution, and the Supreme Court refused to review those cases. The public clearly supports legalizing gay marriage, and the amount of public support grows every year.
But Christian conservatives want to hold the party hostage, dooming the GOP to either lose due to its extremism on social issues or to lose due to uncompromising Christian extremists giving up their support.
Huckabee was representing the views of a lot of hard-line Christian conservatives when he said, "I am utterly exasperated with Republicans and the so-called leadership of the Republicans who have abdicated on this issue [of gay marriage]. If the Republicans want to lose guys like me and a whole bunch of still God-fearing, Bible-believing people, go ahead."
His view is completely at odds with reality. The Republican Party has been opposing gay marriage - and influential Republican politicians have gone to crazy extremes to do so. They are losing not because they aren't anti-gay enough but precisely because they are so anti-gay. A clear majority - 55 percent to 42 percent in May 2014 - supports legalizing gay marriage, according to Gallup.
In the wake of the many court rulings, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), a freshman Senator who is popular on the right, said that he was going to try to pass a constitutional amendment to allow states to ban gay marriage. This came only a few weeks after he attacked the Democratic Party for trying to pass an amendment to overturn a Supreme Court ruling on free speech that they disagree with. It's the kind of Sisyphean task that the Senator and the party are known for. Last year, Cruz refused to allow the passage of a government-funding bill unless the Democrats, who controlled the majority, voted to defund their own signature healthcare law, resulting in a government shutdown. If the GOP backs his amendment, it will further hurt their brand.
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