Was Last Week the Week Republicans Stopped Fighting Marriage Equality?

Scott Walker

With more and more younger voters and Americans in general supporting marriage equality, it seems that some in the Republican Party seem to be finally seeing the handwriting on the wall and are throttling back on their opposition to same sex marriage going nationwide.  That's not to say that they are openly supporting gay marriage since they still have to contend with the spittle flecked, knuckle dragging elements of the GOP base (.e., the Christofascists), but there does seem to be a change in the tone.  BuzzFeed looks at the past week and the apparent shift in opposition to LGBT equality and the GOP's move towards "living in the real world" to quote Senator Orrin Hatch.  Here are highlights:

While Republicans aren’t likely to join the fight for marriage equality en masse, the past week has shown that a growing core of the party is done fighting.

Since Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett announced last Thursday that he would not be appealing a ruling striking down his state’s ban on same-sex couples’ marriages, two key Republican voices have signaled that Corbett is right and the fight is over.

The next day, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker — one of the Republicans often discussed as a potential 2016 presidential nominee — essentially ceded the issue to federal judges.

“Any federal judge has got to look at that law not only with respect to the state’s constitution but what it means in terms of the U.S. Constitution, as well. Again, I’m not going to pretend to tell a federal judge in that regard what he or she should do about it,” Walker said, adding that “[v]oters don’t talk to [him] about that.”

Then, on Wednesday, Sen. Orrin Hatch — a key voice for Republicans on judicial issues since the 1990s — went even further than Walker in an interview with KSL radio.

“Anybody that does not believe that gay marriage is going to be the law of the land just hasn’t been observing what’s going on,” he said. “The trend right now in the courts is to permit gay marriage, and anybody who doesn’t admit that just isn’t living in the real world.”

None of the three have gone so far as Pennsylvania Rep. Charlie Dent did this week in announcing his support for marriage equality; all say they still support one-man, one-woman marriage. At the same time, though, they believe the country has reached a point where spending time and energy on fighting the issue is no longer worth it. And, the cry of “activist judges” has been replaced with deference to the judicial process.

They’re not alone, either. In the past year, Republican Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Brian Sandoval of Nevada stopped fighting marriage equality lawsuits over bans in their states during the course of litigation. Once the state’s supreme court ruled in favor of marriage equality in New Mexico last December, Republican Gov. Susana Martinez opposed any effort to put forth a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex couples’ marriages in the state.

And, it’s not just marriage. Corbett, before the marriage decision, had announced that he supported legislation under consideration in the state to ban anti-LGBT discrimination. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder announced a similar view on Thursday.

Read the rest of the piece.  Needless to say, there will be whining and shrieking from Christofascists like hate group leader Tony Perkins and the hate merchants at NOM.