Alabama GOP Votes Against Removing Member For Supporting Gay Marriage

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Perhaps there is some hope for my former state of Alabama yet.  I frequently lament that Alabama is far more insane now that it was in the late 1970's when I lived there and George Wallace was governor (I got to meet Wallace once).  In a move that frankly took me by surprise, the Alabama GOP voted down a rule change aimed at expelling the president of the state College Republicans organization for committing the heresy of supporting gay marriage.  One can only assume that the Christofascist behind the proposed rule change failed to ladled out enough Kool-Aid to addle the minds of the governing board of the state GOP.   Talking Points Memo looks at the surprising and welcome move.  Here are highlights:

The Alabama Republican Party voted Saturday against a proposed rule that would have removed a junior member from its steering committee because of her support of gay marriage, the Associated Press reported.

The measure was aimed at Stephanie Petelos, the chairwoman of the Alabama College Republicans, who had made public comments in support of the Supreme Court's decision to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act. Petelos told the AP she hopes her ordeal "doesn't scare or shy anyone away from the party."

Bonnie Sachs, an executive committee member who proposed the rule change, told the AP that steering committee members need to serve "in such a way that we don't go to the media with an agenda that we may have." Other committee members said they didn't share Petalos' view on gay marriage, but did respect her First Amendment right to expressing that view.

"We're not the Taliban. We're not the Third Reich," committee member Clay Barclay told the AP.

Perhaps the GOP isn't yet the Taliban or Third Reich, but that is exactly the type of regime that the Christofascist who drafted the 20112 GOP party platform would like to implement.   Candidly, I can see FRC's Tony Perkins happily playing a role equivalent to that of Joesph Goebbels in the Third Reich.  Or if not Perkins, then Gary Bauer.