Ex-Gov Jon Huntsman (R-UT) Supports Marriage Equality

Jon Huntsman is the former Governor of Utah and former U.S. Ambassador to China who ran for the Republican nomination for president in 2011. He was the person the Obama-Biden team feared the most but of course he was also considered absolutely unacceptable by theGOP base.

I don't know if Huntsman is thinking about running for President in 2016 but it is very interesting that he has become the first of the 2012 presidential contenders to come out publicly in favor of marriage equality.

While serving as governor of Utah, I pushed for civil unions and expanded reciprocal benefits for gay citizens. I did so not because of political pressure—indeed, at the time 70 percent of Utahns were opposed—but because as governor my role was to work for everybody, even those who didn’t have access to a powerful lobby. Civil unions, I believed, were a practical step that would bring all citizens more fully into the fabric of a state they already were—and always had been—a part of.

That was four years ago. Today we have an opportunity to do more: conservatives should start to lead again and push their states to join the nine others that allow all their citizens to marry. I’ve been married for 29 years. My marriage has been the greatest joy of my life. There is nothing conservative about denying other Americans the ability to forge that same relationship with the person they love.

All Americans should be treated equally by the law, whether they marry in a church, another religious institution, or a town hall. This does not mean that any religious group would be forced by the state to recognize relationships that run counter to their conscience. Civil equality is compatible with, and indeed promotes, freedom of conscience.

Marriage is not an issue that people rationalize through the abstract lens of the law; rather it is something understood emotionally through one’s own experience with family, neighbors, and friends. The party of Lincoln should stand with our best tradition of equality and support full civil marriage for all Americans.

Huntsman makes the case for marriage equality from a conservative point of view, and is an important marker in the journey of this issue moving to a bipartisan cause, as the Respect for Marriage Coalition espouses.

Herman Cain Leads Latest NBC Poll

Black Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain is now leading the polls for the Republican nomination, breaking out of the single digit pack.

Cain also leads putative frontrunner Mitt Romney in recent polls in Florida, South Carolina, and Iowa..  Surely, a Black man could never be elected President of the United States, right?

Hat/tip to Joe.My.God.

Herman Cain Says Homosexuality Is A Sin and A Choice

MadProfessah first blogged about Black republican presidential candidate Herman Cain way back in April, noting then that he was once a mathematics major.

Cain has started making headlines because he is starting to appear in the middle or at the top of polling lists in early Presidential primary states, with more support than media darlings like Jon Huntsman and Tim Pawlenty.

Openly gay Miami Herald blogger Steve Rothaus has the transcript:

"I believe homosexuality is a sin because I'm a Bible-believing Christian, I believe it's a sin," he said. "But I know that some people make that choice. That's their choice." 

Cain was asked: "So you believe it's a choice?" 

"I believe it is a choice," he responded.

I wonder if Mr. Cain believes in the Golden Rule?

Hat/tip to Rod 2.0

Frank Rich Demolishes The NOM Ad

Columnist Frank Rich demolished the now universally-mocked National Organization for Marriage's "A Storm Is Coming" ad campaign opposed to marriage equality in an op-ed published in Sunday's New York Times.

As the polls attest, the majority of Americans who support civil unions for gay couples has been steadily growing. Younger voters are fine with marriage. Generational changeover will seal the deal. Crunching all the numbers, the poll maven Nate Silver sees same-sex marriage achieving majority support “at some point in the 2010s.”

Iowa and Vermont were the tipping point because they struck down the right’s two major arguments against marriage equality. The unanimous ruling of the seven-member Iowa Supreme Court proved that the issue is not merely a bicoastal fad. The decision, written by Mark Cady, a Republican appointee, was particularly articulate in explaining that a state’s legalization of same-sex marriage has no effect on marriage as practiced by religions. “The only difference,” the judge wrote, is that “civil marriage will now take on a new meaning that reflects a more complete understanding of equal protection of the law.”

[...]

In 2008, 60 percent of Iowa’s Republican caucus voters were evangelical Christians. Mike Huckabee won. That’s the hurdle facing the party’s contenders in 2012, which is why Romney, Palin and Gingrich are now all more vehement anti-same-sex-marriage activists than Rick Warren. Palin even broke with John McCain on the issue during their campaign, supporting the federal marriage amendment that he rejects. This month, even as the father of Palin’s out-of-wedlock grandson challenged her own family values and veracity, she nominated as Alaskan attorney general a man who has called gay people “degenerates.” Such homophobia didn’t even play in Alaska — the State Legislature voted the nominee down — and will doom Republicans like Palin in national elections.

One G.O.P. politician who understands this is the McCain-Palin 2008 campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, who on Friday urged his party to join him in endorsing same-sex marriage. Another is Jon Huntsman Jr., the governor of Utah, who in February endorsed civil unions for gay couples, a position seemingly indistinguishable from Obama’s. Huntsman is not some left-coast Hollywood Republican. He’s a Mormon presiding over what Gallup ranks as the reddest state in the country.

[...]

As marital equality haltingly but inexorably spreads state by state for gay Americans in the years to come, Utah will hardly be in the lead to follow Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa and Vermont. But the fact that it too is taking its first steps down that road is extraordinary. It is justice, not a storm, that is gathering. Only those who have spread the poisons of bigotry and fear have any reason to be afraid.

Pow!