Echoing a theme that Andrew Sullivan voiced years ago and which more recently the Tory Party leadership in Britain has embraced, Jon Huntsman has come out for gay marriage and said that the Republican Party needs to shed its anti-gay mindset. Lest we forget, Huntsman is a Mormon with a conservative although his record when he was governor of Utah sought moderation on gay issues. Huntsman also argues that the GOP needs to rethink its positions on numerous others, including tax reform and immigration. Obviously, to the Christofascists and white supremacists in the GOP base, Huntsman is a heretic. Personally, I believe that Huntsman is a pragmatist who sees the GOP's homophobia as harming the Republican Party's long term viability. So long as religious denominations are free to recognize or not recognize same sex marriage, civil marriage should be open to all committed loving couples, gay or straight. Here are highlights from a piece in The American Conservative written by Huntsman:
The party of Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan has now lost the popular vote in five of the last six presidential elections. The marketplace of ideas will render us irrelevant, and soon, if we are not honest about our time and place in history. Unfortunately, much of the discussion has focused on cosmetic solutions to, say, our underperformance among ethnic and young voters. This is a mistake: we cannot cross this river by feeling for stones. Instead, we need to take a hard look at what today’s conservatism stands for.
Conservatives can start by examining how Republicans working with Democrats have governed in several successful states, including Utah; free-market-based healthcare reform, tax reform that eliminated deductions and closed loopholes to bring down rates, and practical education reforms that spoke to 21st-century realities.
Instead of using immigration reform as a wedge issue, like many leaders in Washington, Utah passed legislation to help manage immigration based on our real economic needs. . . . . Building a winning coalition to tackle the looming fiscal and trust deficits will be impossible if we continue to alienate broad segments of the population. We must be happy warriors who refuse to tolerate those who want Hispanic votes but not Hispanic neighbors.
And, consistent with the Republican Party’s origins, we must demand equality under the law for all Americans.
While serving as governor of Utah, I pushed for civil unions and expanded reciprocal benefits for gay citizens. I did so not because of political pressure—indeed, at the time 70 percent of Utahns were opposed—but because as governor my role was to work for everybody, even those who didn’t have access to a powerful lobby. Civil unions, I believed, were a practical step that would bring all citizens more fully into the fabric of a state they already were—and always had been—a part of.
That was four years ago. Today we have an opportunity to do more: conservatives should start to lead again and push their states to join the nine others that allow all their citizens to marry.
All Americans should be treated equally by the law, whether they marry in a church, another religious institution, or a town hall. This does not mean that any religious group would be forced by the state to recognize relationships that run counter to their conscience. Civil equality is compatible with, and indeed promotes, freedom of conscience.
Marriage is not an issue that people rationalize through the abstract lens of the law; rather it is something understood emotionally through one’s own experience with family, neighbors, and friends. The party of Lincoln should stand with our best tradition of equality and support full civil marriage for all Americans.
We are at a crossroads. I believe the American people will vote for free markets under equal rules of the game—because there is no opportunity or job growth any other way. But the American people will not hear us out if we stand against their friends, family, and individual liberty.
I have always liked Huntsman and believe that the GOP threw away its chance of winning in 2012 by kicking Huntsman to the curb. Huntsman's only crime, if you will, was that he wasn't a nutcase and wasn't willing to prostitute himself to the worse elements of the GOP base. He sees the future while the gay haters and racists in the GOP are trying to recapture a past that will never again exist - if it ever even existed as they like to think it did. Will the GOP listen to his wisdom? Probably not. I can just image the spittle flying at FRC and other hater groups that control far too many of the GOP's policies.
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