Unlike abortion, gay marriage is not the automatic winner for the [political] right that it was as recently as the 1990s when Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act . . .For background read, Obama 'Throws Marriage Under the Bus' and also read Tea Party Movement vs. 'Gay Agenda Tea Party'
UPDATE 3/27/11: Same-sex marriage no longer such a divisive political issue
-- From "Gay Marriage Seems to Wane as Conservative Issue" by Michael D. Shear and Sheryl Gay Stolberg, New York Times 2/24/11
President Obama’s decision to abandon his legal support for the Defense of Marriage Act has generated only mild rebukes from the Republicans hoping to succeed him in 2012, evidence of a shifting political climate in which social issues are being crowded out by economic concerns.
In the hours [after Obama's decision], Sarah Palin’s Facebook site was silent. Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, was close-mouthed. Tim Pawlenty, the former governor of Minnesota, released a Web video — on the labor union protests in Wisconsin — and waited a day before issuing a marriage statement saying he was “disappointed.”
Others, like Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and Haley Barbour, the governor of Mississippi, took their time weighing in, and then did so only in the most tepid terms. “The Justice Department is supposed to defend our laws,” Mr. Barbour said.
Asked if Mitch Daniels, the Republican governor of Indiana and a possible presidential candidate, had commented on the marriage decision, a spokeswoman said that he “hasn’t, and with other things we have going on here right now, he has no plans.”
The sharpest reaction came from Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, in an interview here during a stop to promote his new book, who called the administration’s decision “utterly inexplicable.”
To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.
From "2012: Gay marriage no longer a potent political issue?" posted at MSNBC.com 2/25/11
SANTORUM: “Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum said Thursday in Iowa that President Obama’s decision to instruct his administration not to prosecute violations of the federal ban on same-sex marriage would ignite the issue in the 2012 Republican presidential campaign,” the Des Moines Register writes.
HUCKABEE: “Mike Huckabee thinks all the early evidence suggests he, not the former Massachusetts governor [Mitt Romney], is the Republican Party’s presidential front-runner,” National Journal writes of an interview with the former governor.
PALIN: Republican activists in key conservative early primary states are turning on Sarah Palin, McClatchy writes. “At a recent gathering in South Carolina, the site of a crucial early presidential primary next year, party activists said the former Alaska governor didn't have the experience, the knowledge of issues or the ability to get beyond folksy slang and bumper-sticker generalities that they think is needed to win and govern.”
To read the entire article above, CLICK HERE.
From "Gay Marriage Decision May Not Hurt Obama or Help the Religious Right" by David Gibson, Religion Reporter, Politics Daily 2/25/11
Even among evangelicals and other conservatives, opposition [to same-sex 'marriage'] is eroding, especially among a younger generation that doesn't see anything all that wrong with gay and lesbian couples.
Mike Huckabee, a possible 2012 presidential candidate who is far and away the front runner among Republican voters when it comes to social issues and moral values, this week conceded that reality. The former Baptist pastor noted that younger evangelicals have shown an "alarming" trend toward acceptance of homosexual relationships that could complicate political prospects for a candidate like himself who sees gay marriage as a moral threat on par with abortion.
As authors Robert Putnam and David Campbell write in their sweeping new study of faith in the United States, "American Grace," given these trends "homosexuality will become less attractive as a wedge issue in politics and will likely cease to be a potent issue at all." If anything, homosexuality is becoming a dividing line within the Republican Party rather than between Republicans and Democrats, as shown by the boycott of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference by some groups of social conservatives (and not others) over the presence of the conservative gay organization, GOProud.
White evangelicals who form the core of the Republican right (and the tea party movement) remain the most opposed to gay marriage. . . .
To read the entire opinion column above, CLICK HERE.
