Tom LoBianco, writing for the Associated Press, has a story on the lobbying within the state Republican Party on the subject of marriage equality in advance of the party convention. Some want to include a plank that prefers heterosexual marriage. Others want to leave that plank out.
At question is whether the party’s platform, its official statement of party values, should oppose gay marriage. The fight to win over the roughly 1,700 Republican delegates to the convention has been waged with the trappings of a professional campaign: Postcards and fliers have been hitting mailboxes, and volunteers have been calling delegates for close to two weeks now.
The ever-present Jim Bopp is confident that the marriage clause will make it into the platform. Megan Robertson, who led the campaign for Freedom Indiana opposing SJR 3/6, is working to keep the language out of the platform.
Cheryl Musgrave, a delegate out of Vanderburgh County (and former head of the Department of Local Government Finance) is quoted as saying:
“Our party platform should have broad-based support and concentrate on issues involving lower taxes and smaller government. I don’t believe the marriage debate is an appropriate thing for a party platform to be discussing.”
The convention is this weekend, so I guess we’ll see how that shakes out.
I say leave it in, along with a statement affirming that Elvis is alive and belief in space aliens. It should be a definitive statement that these folks have no idea where the public is on these matters.
Leave it in. Why hide the bigotry and pettiness that is so obviously the heart of the current Republican party? Embrace it and see where that takes you.
This is their opportunity to at last be honest with the world. I say take it!
I look at the national stories about what the Republicans are up to, and I see where sentiments like these come from. Those stories make the national Republican party look like a train wreck. But, as it happens, I work at the ground level with local government with a lot of Republicans who are excellent people doing their level best and who are not bigots in any sense I can see. I see the state Republicans from medium range, and they seem to be a mixed bag.
Regardless of the outcome of the platform vote, I guess I’m just pleased to see that it’s up for question. 10 years ago, the debate would have been on the Democratic side, and the Republicans would have been rock solid in their opposition to gay marriage.
Jim Bopp is most disgusting and evil men in America today. And, I chose those words carefully.
If ignorantly…