Gay Marriage & GOP Candidates

I found this AP News article, "Gay Marriage: awkward  issue for some GOP hopefuls," to be fascinating on several different levels.

Gay marriage is a very sticky issue for those who are really trying to appease the religious evangelicals (ie Bachman) because I don't think anyone can win by only being appealing to them, but you can lose by upsetting them. However, it is also complicated with social conservatives who do not identify as evangelicals because there is a spectrum of stances on gay marriage...just like with the GOP candidates.

I appreciated the succinct summarization of several of the candidates and their position on gay marriage. Frankly, some of them just don't make sense to me, particularly Governor Perry (Texas) who stated that it's okay for New York to do it, while maintaining that he personally against it. He's making a states rights issue, but gay marriage is not a states rights issue. It is a human issue, no matter what state you are in. It's either okay altogether (in all states) or it's not. Either you believe gay marriage is a moral issue and effects the basic unit of society or you don't. Some issues are states issues, but this is not one of them. That is not a decision that should be left up to individual states. This isn't a statement of whether gay marriage is right or wrong, it's a comment on the nature of the issue.

For Bachman and Perry to say "they respect the rights of individual states to legalize same-sex marriage, yet both also say they would support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would define marriage nationally as limited to heterosexual couples" seems pretty outrageous to me. As voter, it's hard enough to know what you're going to get when you vote for someone even without glaring contradictory statements like these.

Yes, we should always expect dancing around a complicated issues from all candidates. As a voter, I would appreciate straight (no pun intended) talk and do not want to see candidates playing both sides of the fence. Be sensitive and compassionate to everyone involved, but do not say it's a State's issue but that you are personally against it. I think Romney, Pawlenty and Huntsman (especially the seemingly more moderate Huntsman) may have the advantage in this category of the debate, but we will see what future statements they make...

Finally, I found it very interesting that the advice given to GOP candidates concerning the gay marriage is to simply avoid it because of the complexity and implications of the issue. I think this is the worst advice ever. Voters want to know what they're getting! The economy is a complex issue with huge implications but no one is advising candidates not to talk about it. Gay marriage is not a back-burner issue; people want to know where their representatives stand. Even if it's not the issue they are most concerned about (ie compared to the economy), they want to know what they could probably expect. Personally, if I found a candidate dodging the issue (or any important issue), I would be much less likely to vote for them.

I sure hope these GOP candidates don't listen to the professional advice-givers and start listening to me.