So how do you put a silver lining on Tuesday’s election? It’s not as hard as you may think for the LGBT community.
Let’s start with the big issue: LGBTs were not an issue in any campaign in the nation. No Republican ran on attacking marriage equality. In fact, the conservative governor of Wisconsin tossed in the towel, and in purple Florida, Rick Scott side-stepped the topic, stating: “While I believe in traditional marriage, we’ve got to understand people have different views. It’s going through the court system. My understanding is it’s going right directly to the Supreme Court. Whatever the Supreme Court decides, they’ll decide what the law in Florida is. I will abide by that law.”
And in red Southern states, we weren’t an issue in state races in places like Virginia, North Carolina, Kentucky, Arkansas and even Louisiana. A short 12 years ago, George W. Bush won re-election campaigning at every stop with an anti-equality message. That idea was the backbone of Republicans. This year, they ran from it. So how does this look for the 2016 presidential race? A total 180 by Republicans.
After Tuesday’s election, let’s look at where the leading potential Republican nominees for president stand on marriage equality.
Chris Christie, who campaigned for a number of ultimately victorious Republican gubernational candidates across the country, last year accepted the court ruling granting same-sex couples the right to marry in New Jersey, declining not to appeal and thereby allowing marriage equality in the Garden State.
Scott Walker of Wisconsin is emerging as a major player for the nomination after winning re-election as governor on Tuesday, having also survived two other races to topple him in the last few years. He has followed Christie’s lead on marriage equality.
Then there’s Jeb Bush. As the Washington Post described, his position on marriage equality is complicated. Bush stated, “I don’t think people need to be discriminated against because they don’t share my belief on this, and if people love their children with all their heart and soul and that’s what they do and that’s how they organize their life, that should be held up as examples for others to follow because we need it. We desperately need it and that can take all sorts of forms. It doesn’t have to take the one that I think should be sanctioned under the law.”
Likewise, he told the Conservative Political Action Conference recently that “way too many people believe Republicans are anti-everything,” including “antigay.”
Now, there are certainly still possible Republican candidates who proudly oppose marriage equality, chief among them Rand Paul, who claims to be a Libertarian.
When President Obama came out in support of marriage equality in 2012, Paul said the president’s views “couldn’t get any gayer.” He later called himself “an old-fashioned traditionalist” who believes “in the historic and religious definition of marriage.”
That’s hypocritical for a Libertarian if you look up the definition of the word.
The other leading contenders, Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, are all opposed to marriage equality, but it should be noted that none of the three were used as surrogates in this past Tuesday’s election, compared to Centrist Republicans. Translation: the Senatorial candidates did not want to polarize the electorate in their states, but rather wanted to keep the social issues at bay.
As this column predicted early in the 2012 race, with the defeat of Rick Santorum during the primary season, we were seeing the end of hatred towards the LGBT community from Republicans, since they knew the tide had shifted.
I also predicted that Santorum would run again, as seems most likely, and will again lose the Republican primary — and thus crumble the last vestiges of LGBT hate speech being allowed in a presidential election.
Even Karl Rove, who was the architect of George W. Bush’s antigay strategy of 2004, has stated there “could” be a 2016 Republican presidential candidate who supports same-sex marriage.
In the end, there is movement on our issues and even Republicans are noting that. We can dwell on the negatives of Tuesday’s election, but I’d rather look for the areas we can build on — and a roadmap is there.