Quote of the Day - Michael Steele, Former RNC Chair

Former RNC chair, Michael Steele

With Republicans and the usual voices of right wing media - who would tell you it was raining on a bright sunny day if it fit their purposes - trying the blame the federal government shutdown on Democrats, a few responsible voices from the right are not buying it.  One is former RNC chairman, Michael Steele who I listen to often on satellite radio on my evening commute.  I sense Steele's frustration with what the Republican Party has become and his disgust with the current occupant of the White House.  Here's a quote from Sterele via Politico:

Despite the rhetorical effort to paste Democrats with “Schumer’s Shutdown” and to redefine what constitutes majority control of the senate (“60”? Really?), the fact remains that this shutdown rests at the feet of the GOP and it appears a majority of Americans agree. I don’t like it. It certainly could have been avoided, but the President wound up negotiating against himself by taking a potential agreement off the table, leaving Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to lament, “As soon as we figure out what he is for, then I would be convinced that we were not just spinning our wheels.” That put Republicans in the position to spin their wheels right into another government shutdown. Pitiful.

Yes, 60 votes were needed in the Senate, so that means Republicans need to compromise.  Yet, that is something they are unwilling to do as is the lunatic in the White House who increasingly acts as if he is bi-polar and definitely not staying on his meds. One moment his conciliatory and then the next he swings back into obstruction.   believe that intelligent voters - sorry, but that excludes Fox News viewers - will understand that the blame falls on the GOP and Trump. 

John McCain Lets Loose on Trump and Do Nothing Congress

Perhaps his cancer diagnosis has prompted to think about his own mortality and the need to get things accomplished.  Or perhaps he has belated reverted back to the John McCain of old - prior to his sellout to the far right and his selection of the idiot of Wasilla as his running mate.  Whatever the cause, in a Washington Post op-ed John McCain has vented his frustration with what the GOP has become and Congress' failure to fulfill its constitutional duties and to put the well being of the nation and all citizens ahead of partisan posturing and small mindedness.  It reminds me of why I once supported McCain in his 2000 presidential primary bid.  Here are op-ed highlights:

Americans recoiled from the repugnant spectacle of white supremacists marching in Charlottesville to promote their un-American “blood and soil” ideology. There is nothing in their hate-driven racism that can match the strength of a nation conceived in liberty and comprising 323 million souls of different origins and opinions who are equal under the law.

Most of us share Heather Heyer’s values, not the depravity of the man who took her life. We are the country that led the free world to victory over fascism and dispatched communism to the ash heap of history. We are the superpower that organized not an empire, but an international order of free, independent nations that has liberated more people from poverty and tyranny than anyone thought possible in the age of colonies and autocracies.

Our shared values define us more than our differences. And acknowledging those shared values can see us through our challenges today if we have the wisdom to trust in them again.

Congress will return from recess next week facing continued gridlock as we lurch from one self-created crisis to another. We are proving inadequate not only to our most difficult problems but also to routine duties. Our national political campaigns never stop. We seem convinced that majorities exist to impose their will with few concessions and that minorities exist to prevent the party in power from doing anything important.

That’s not how we were meant to govern. Our entire system of government — with its checks and balances, its bicameral Congress, its protections of the rights of the minority — was designed for compromise.

That has never been truer than today, when Congress must govern with a president who has no experience of public office, is often poorly informed and can be impulsive in his speech and conduct.

We must respect his authority and constitutional responsibilities. We must, where we can, cooperate with him. But we are not his subordinates. We don’t answer to him. We answer to the American people. We must be diligent in discharging our responsibility to serve as a check on his power. And we should value our identity as members of Congress more than our partisan affiliation.

I argued during the health-care debate for a return to regular order, letting committees of jurisdiction do the principal work of crafting legislation and letting the full Senate debate and amend their efforts. . . .  We might not like the compromises regular order requires, but we can and must live with them if we are to find real and lasting solutions. And all of us in Congress have the duty, in this sharply polarized atmosphere, to defend the necessity of compromise before the American public.

Let’s try that approach on a budget that realistically meets the nation’s critical needs.  . . . A compromise that raises spending caps for both sides’ priorities is better than the abject failure that has been our achievement to date.

Let’s also try that approach on immigration. The president has promised greater border security. We can agree to that. A literal wall might not be the most effective means to that end, but we can provide the resources necessary to secure the border with smart and affordable measures. Let’s make it part of a comprehensive bill that members of both parties can get behind — one that values our security as well as the humanity of immigrants and their contributions to our economy and culture.

Let’s try it on tax reform and infrastructure improvement and all the other urgent priorities confronting us. These are all opportunities to show that ordinary, decent, free people can govern competently, respectfully and humbly, and to prove the value of the United States Congress to the great nation we serve.

Now if only other members of Congress would do what McCain asks.

Ted Cruz's Idiocy Aids Democrats

By some reports, Texas Senator Ted Cruz isn't ignorant.  But that's not to say he isn't (i) batshit crazy, and (ii) more interested in grand standing to the ugliest elements in the Republican Party than in actually getting things done even if a small amount of compromise is the price of accomplishing much of one's agenda.  Conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin - I find it scary when she and I are in agreement - lets lose on Cruz and the manner in which he lets his grandstanding and attempts to prostitute himself to Christofascists/Tea Party loons deny the GOP the ability to acheive rational goals.  Here are excerpts from her piece in the Washington Post:

Most of the talk about Republican gadfly Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) in the last few days concerned his role in forcing a delay on passage of the $1.1 trillion spending bill. He was slapped down on his “point of order” by a 74-22 vote, including 20 no votes from Republicans.

In a scathing op-ed the conservative Washington Examiner editorial board wrote:

Cruz’s and [Sen. Mike] Lee’s parliamentary freelancing gave Reid all he needed to advance the schedule by two full days and guarantee the confirmation of these nominations. In exchange for making Reid’s job easy on ramming the nominations through, all Cruz and Lee got was a symbolic floor vote against Obama’s executive action on immigration. It drew the support of only 22 senators. . . . . . The weekend’s events demonstrate that some Republicans are not playing on the same team. This was not a simple, common occurrence of senatorial independence, but rather open defiance of caucus strategy — a decision by junior officers that their own tactical decisions take precedence over those of generals who were chosen for the job.

Criticism of Cruz usually centers on this type of grandstanding at the expense of colleagues. But he also has a propensity to vote no on every piece of major legislation that involves any compromise for the hard right. Some refer to this as making the perfect the enemy of the good, such as when House Republicans under his spell voted against the “Plan B” to minimize the elimination of part of the Bush tax cuts; the end result was worse for Republicans.

Is his concern for federal lands so great that it trumps national security? That is screwy, to be blunt, and suggests he subordinates the government’s highest priority (national security), including some key items on the war against the Islamic State, to his fetish for fiscal purity. This is why, I suspect, he will never vote on any vehicle to lift the defense sequestration cuts. Gasp — that might require a compromise!

[I]t is the philosophy of anti-governance, because getting everything one wants and taking no lumps make legislating impossible. Consistently rejecting useful and conservative legislation because of small infirmities is not the behavior of a leader dedicated to accomplishing important things, and it suggests Cruz is grossly unsuited for the Senate, let alone higher office. Imagine if he ran a state — or the country — without super-majorities of Republicans. Things would be worse than they are now. Rigidity of mind and contempt for opponents in a president have resulted in paralysis and nastiness for six years, so why repeat the experience?

The Senate is a personal platform for him, not a position to perform well in delivering the best possible results for Texans or Americans at large. Thank goodness voters found out early on that his fixation is with fame and not with tending to the real needs of the country.

Ouch!  The man is a douche bag!!

Amazingly, Daily Press Endorses McAuliffe for Governor

Yours truly with Terry McAuliffe earlier this year

In many ways, the Daily Press - which covers the Virginia Peninsula and Williamsburg area -  has become an utter right wing rag.  It's become so far right and so poor on its news coverage that the boyfriend and I dropped our subscription entirely.  Thus, my utter shock and amazement to see the Daily Press endorse Terry McAuliffe for Governor.  I nearly needed to have smelling salts administered to me.  That even the Daily Press is running from Cuccinelli speaks volumes about the extremism of this year's GOP statewide slate.  Here are excerpts from the column:

This year's gubernatorial candidates have not thrilled the majority of voters. Democrat Terry McAuliffe has never held public office, and there are concerns about his history of mixing business ventures with his work as a political operative. Republican Ken Cuccinelli, the sitting Attorney General, has his own ethics challenge with Star Scientific, mostly pertaining to substantial gifts he received from the CEO.

But no one is perfect, and voters must decide which man will best serve them. We believe Mr. McAuliffe is the more pragmatic choice to lead our commonwealth for the next four years.

Ultimately, it comes down to a question of which man can break through the partisan gridlock and form a consensus on the critical issues Virginia faces. Mr. McAuliffe's strongest asset is his ability to bring together people with differing opinions and negotiate deals in which both parties can find satisfaction. The man is a natural deal maker.

By contrast, Mr. Cuccinelli has used the attorney general's job to take an active role in promoting his own agenda on cultural issues. He made it clear that his office would not defend members of the state's Board of Health if they challenged new legislation targeted squarely at clinics that provide abortions. He demanded research documents from a prominent scientist who formerly worked at U.Va. researching climate change, costing that institution hundreds of thousands of dollars in unnecessary legal bills. He instructed state colleges and universities that they could not protect gays and lesbians from discrimination. 

Mr. Cuccinelli has a fatal flaw for one who would be leader of all Virginians: He cannot make pragmatic compromises that allow all sides to come away from the bargaining table feeling they have been heard. This is the problem that is crippling our national government today, and we cannot allow to make further headway in our commonwealth. Our Virginia forebears established this nation on personal freedom and respect for compromise, not rigid ideology.

Mr. Cuccinelli has divided not only Virginia's voters, but his own party. . . . . Ample proof lies in the large number of moderate Republican politicians and strategists who have lined up to endorse Mr. McAuliffe – from Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms to Boyd Marcus, who was chief of staff under former Gov. Jim Gilmore. If Mr. Cuccinelli cannot inspire strong support within his own party, how is he going to forge deals with a General Assembly composed of Democrats and Republicans of varying political leanings?

Mr. McAuliffe's extensive background in business would help him tackle the state's most pressing issues, which are directly linked to the economy. His opponents have criticized him as overly opportunistic, but he has been careful to stay on the proper side of the law and has shown an acute talent for bringing deals together and seeing them to fruition.

When Mr. Cuccinelli visited our editorial board four years ago during his campaign for attorney general, he vowed that his strongly held personal beliefs would not interfere with his responsibility to defend and uphold the laws of the commonwealth. We believe he broke that promise.

Trying to appeal to a broader base of Virginia voters, Mr. Cuccinelli is now once again promising that he would not use the office of governor to advance his social beliefs. Based on his past actions, we find that claim hard to accept.

This decision comes down to which candidate is best suited to develop and pass legislation that will benefit our commonwealth. We believe Terry McAuliffe is the best choice for Virginia. He will work to bridge party divides and find common ground to move our state forward. And that's what Virginia needs.

Yep, the Daily Press has Cuccinelli's number and thankfully see him as a lying ideologue.  Kudos to the editorial board.

The GOP Endangers America's Political System

As the Republican Party increasingly takes on the behavior of anarchists and saboteurs, America's political system is itself on a cliff.  Never did the Founding Fathers envision a political party that seems so bent on destroying the nation's economy and the financial well being of millions of Americans - indeed, the nation itself - as House Republicans act as if they area pack of rabid dogs.  As I've noted before, this descent into insanity in my view traces directly to the rise of the Christofascists and more recently the Tea Party fanatics in the Republican Party.  Thanks to these foul elements, the GOP's rejection of logic, reason and objective reality - not to mention any ability to compromise - is now complete.  A column in the Washington Post looks at this frightening phenomenon.  Here are highlights:

The United States faces a crisis in our political system because the Republican Party, particularly in the House of Representatives, is no longer a normal, governing party.

The only way we will avoid a constitutional crackup is for a new, bipartisan majority to take effective control of the House and isolate those who would rather see the country fall into chaos than vote for anything that might offend their ideological sensibilities.

[A] normal party accepts that compromise is the only way to legislate. A normal party takes into account election results. A normal party recognizes when the other side has made real concessions. A normal party takes responsibility.  By all of these measures, the Republican majority that Speaker John Boehner purports to lead is abnormal. 

Many of his most radical members believe they have a right to use any means at their disposal to impose their views on the country, even if they are only a minority in Congress.  There may, however, be good news in the disarray: The right wing of the Republican House has chosen to marginalize itself from any serious negotiations.

The one available majority for action, especially on budgets, is a coalition uniting most Democrats with those Republicans who still hold the old-fashioned view that they were elected to help run the country.  To avert a fiscal nightmare in the short run, this potential majority needs to be allowed to work its will.

In the longer run, the non-tea party wing of the GOP will have to decide whether it wants to be subject to the whims of colleagues to their right or look to the center for alliances with the Democrats. The choice is plain: We can spend two years doing absolutely nothing, or we can try to solve the country’s problems. 

Our political structure has been disfigured in another way: In November’s election, Democrats failed to win the House even though they received about a million more votes in House contests than the Republicans did. Republicans were protected by gerrymandered districts and by political geography: Democrats tend to win urban and certain suburban districts by overwhelming margins.

This unfortunate moment is a vindication of those like my colleagues Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, who have been arguing that today’s Republicans are fundamentally different from their forebears. In their appropriately named book, “It’s Even Worse than It Looks,” Mann and Ornstein called the current GOP “an insurgent outlier in American politics,” and described the party this way: “It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise . . . and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

[A]t least, we know something important: The current Republican majority in the House cannot govern. Only a coalition across party lines can get the public’s business done.

Hopefully, even those who are generally conservatives will realize that the only way to save the country is to abandon the GOP entirely.  Based on comments at a dinner party last night that I attended, this seems to be happening.   One can only hope that the political death of the GOP comes quickly.

Jeb Bush Slams "Dysfunction" of Today's GOP, Says Reagan Could Not Be Nominated Today, Supports Gay Couples

One has to wonder exactly what Jeb Bush is trying to do even if the statements he is making are 100% on target.  Indeed, Jeb Bush's statements echo what I've said before - Ronald Reagan  could not win the GOP nomination given the abject insanity of today's Republican Party.  Oh, and did I mention that Jeb Bush said that stable same sex relationships should be encouraged?    Jeb Bush's heresy could not be more complete.  Heads must be literally exploding amongst wingnut Christianist circles.  Sometimes speaking the truth isn't popular, but that doesn't make it any less the truth.  Here are highlights from BuzzFeed on Jeb's comments on the GOP:

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said today that both Ronald Reagan and his father George H. W. Bush would have had a difficult time getting nominated by today's ultra-conservative Republican Party.

"Ronald Reagan would have, based on his record of finding accommodation, finding some degree of common ground, as would my dad — they would have a hard time if you define the Republican party — and I don’t — as having an orthodoxy that doesn’t allow for disagreement, doesn’t allow for finding some common ground," 

Bush cited, in particular, "the budget deal my dad did, with bipartisan support — at least for a while — that created the spending restraint of the ‘90s," a reference to a move widely viewed now as a political disaster for Bush, breaking a pledge against tax increases and infuriating conservatives. It was, Bush said, "helpful in creating a climate of more sustainted economic growth."  Politically it clearly didn't work out — he was a one term president," his son said.  Bush called the present partisan climate "disturbing."

His remarks to a group of reporters and editors at the headquarters of Bloomberg LP in Manhattan were the latest in a series of concerns Bush, one of the best-respected figures in his party, has raised about its current direction. Other Republicans, including former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, have suggested that this GOP wouldn't nominate Reagan, who raised taxes and made grand bargains with Democrats on immigration and fiscal issues. Bush also repeated criticism of the "tone" of the discussion of immigration issues.

With the Bible beaters, Bush's biggest heresy, however, was in the context of how the nation's laws treat same sex couples.  Here are highlights from Think Progress:

Although his brother supported a constitutional ban on gay marriage as president, the younger Bush believes America needs all forms of families as parenting examples. He clarified that he personally still opposes same-sex marriage, but despite his platitudes offered a contrast to many of his GOP cohort:

BUSH: 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.

Bush’s statement is not an endorsement of marriage equality. Still, coupled with his other observation about how his father and Ronald Reagan would have a hard time finding common ground in today’s GOP, it does show the potential of a party shift on marriage equality similar to President Obama’s own evolution.

Tony Perkins and Bryan Fischer must be having apoplexy!

The Republicans Are The Problem.

I'm sure some regular readers will be near foaming at the mouth over the title of this post and some of what I'm about to say, but just because the truth hurts doesn't make it any less the truth.  And the truth is that the GOP has turned into something foul, extreme and a danger to the country.  And fueling this decline of the GOP are the ignorance embracing hate filled Christianist and their allies in the Tea Party (in fact, the two factions typically overlap each other).  Coming from a family that once was almost all Republican going back for at least 60 years, what has happened to the GOP is not only disturbing, but also an indictment of the party leaders who first made a pact with the devil - i.e., the Christian Right - and in the process jettisoned all logic, reason and, I would argue, integrity and decency.  Nowadays, the more someone talks about their religion and feigned piety, generally, the more morally reprehensible they are in my view.  They hate the poor, they hate minorities, they hate immigrants, and, of course, they hate gays.  The better question is couched in terms of who don't they hate.  Yet the party leadership continues to prostitute themselves to these nasty, ignorance worshiping people.  A lengthy piece in the Washington Post aptly looks at why the GOP is now responsible for the gridlock in Washington and much else that is wrong in America.  Here are excerpts:

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.
 
We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.   When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

 It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.

What happened? Of course, there were larger forces at work beyond the realignment of the South. They included the mobilization of social conservatives after the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, the anti-tax movement launched in 1978 by California’s Proposition 13, the rise of conservative talk radio after a congressional pay raise in 1989, and the emergence of Fox News and right-wing blogs. But the real move to the bedrock right starts with two names: Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist.

[T]he forces Gingrich unleashed destroyed whatever comity existed across party lines, activated an extreme and virulently anti-Washington base — most recently represented by tea party activists — and helped drive moderate Republicans out of Congress.

Norquist, meanwhile, founded Americans for Tax Reform in 1985 and rolled out his Taxpayer Protection Pledge the following year. The pledge, which binds its signers to never support a tax increase (that includes closing tax loopholes), had been signed as of last year by 238 of the 242 House Republicans and 41 of the 47 GOP senators,  .  .  . 

Today, thanks to the GOP, compromise has gone out the window in Washington.  .   .  .  The filibuster, once relegated to a handful of major national issues in a given Congress, became a routine weapon of obstruction, applied even to widely supported bills or presidential nominations. And Republicans in the Senate have abused the confirmation process to block any and every nominee to posts such as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, solely to keep laws that were legitimately enacted from being implemented.

 In the face of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression, the party’s leaders and their outside acolytes insisted on obeisance to a supply-side view of economic growth — thus fulfilling Norquist’s pledge — while ignoring contrary considerations.   The results can border on the absurd: In early 2009, several of the eight Republican co-sponsors of a bipartisan health-care reform plan dropped their support; by early 2010, the others had turned on their own proposal

Democrats are hardly blameless, and they have their own extreme wing and their own predilection for hardball politics. But these tendencies do not routinely veer outside the normal bounds of robust politics. If anything, under the presidencies of Clinton and Obama, the Democrats have become more of a status-quo party. They are centrist protectors of government,  .  .  . 

The GOP’s evolution has become too much for some longtime Republicans. Former senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska called his party “irresponsible” in an interview with the Financial Times in August, at the height of the debt-ceiling battle.

And Mike Lofgren, a veteran Republican congressional staffer, wrote an anguished diatribe last year about why he was ending his career on the Hill after nearly three decades. “The Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe,” he wrote on the Truthout Web site.

Republicans are now more conservative than they have been in more than a century. Their data show a dramatic uptick in polarization, mostly caused by the sharp rightward move of the GOP.  If our democracy is to regain its health and vitality, the culture and ideological center of the Republican Party must change.

We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality.  .  .  .  Our advice to the press: Don’t seek professional safety through the even-handed, unfiltered presentation of opposing views. Which politician is telling the truth? Who is taking hostages, at what risks and to what ends?   Also, stop lending legitimacy to Senate filibusters by treating a 60-vote hurdle as routine. The framers certainly didn’t intend it to be.

If they can punish ideological extremism at the polls and look skeptically upon candidates who profess to reject all dialogue and bargaining with opponents, then an insurgent outlier party will have some impetus to return to the center. Otherwise, our politics will get worse before it gets better. 

A Reconciliation on Gay Marriage?

David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch have an interesting op-ed piece in the New York Times that suggests a middle ground of sorts on the ongoing battles over gay marriage which would provide LGBT couples with many of the same rights and benefits that derive from marriage yet still reserve the term "marriage" for heterosexual couples. The proposal would in effect create a "separate but equal" status which would not necessarily be available in all states due to certain prerequisites on state law provisions. Nevertheless, the proposal would have the potential to provide LGBT couples many more rights than are now available. The reality that the authors fail to address is the fact that in many states it will not be possible to get civil union laws enacted anytime soon, especially in anti-gay states like Virginia, and many LGBT couples would remain less than full citizens.

*

The other interesting aspect of the proposal is that it would help expose the myth that Christianists are only out to "protect marriage." Anyone who has seriously followed Christianist organizations knows that their true goal is to denigrate LGBT citizens and make us societal outcasts. "Protecting marriage" is merely a convenient smoke screen to hide their true hate-based agenda. These people will never agree to civil union laws which would give any form of legitimacy to gay unions. Truth be told, if they could, these folks would happily re-enact the sodomy laws and imprison gays if they could. They have no good will and seek only to impose their religious beliefs on all citizens. Here are some highlights on the proposal:

*

IN politics, as in marriage, moments come along when sensitive compromise can avert a major conflict down the road. The two of us believe that the issue of same-sex marriage has reached such a point now.

*

It would work like this: Congress would bestow the status of federal civil unions on same-sex marriages and civil unions granted at the state level, thereby conferring upon them most or all of the federal benefits and rights of marriage. But there would be a condition: Washington would recognize only those unions licensed in states with robust religious-conscience exceptions, which provide that religious organizations need not recognize same-sex unions against their will. The federal government would also enact religious-conscience protections of its own. All of these changes would be enacted in the same bill.

*

[W]e agree on two facts. First, most gay and lesbian Americans feel they need and deserve the perquisites and protections that accompany legal marriage. Second, many Americans of faith and many religious organizations have strong objections to same-sex unions. Neither of those realities is likely to change any time soon. . . . Linking federal civil unions to guarantees of religious freedom seems a natural way to give the two sides something they would greatly value while heading off a long-term, take-no-prisoners conflict. That should appeal to cooler heads on both sides. . . . If religious exemptions can be made to work for as vexed a moral issue as abortion, same-sex marriage should be manageable, once reasonable people of good will put their heads together.

*

But clinging to extremes can also be quite dangerous. In the case of gay marriage, a scorched-earth debate, pitting what some regard as nonnegotiable religious freedom against what others regard as a nonnegotiable human right, would do great harm to our civil society. When a reasonable accommodation on a tough issue seems possible, both sides should have the courage to explore it.