Homophobia ruled at the spring gathering of the Republican National Committee this week in Los Angeles as the group approved — with no debate — yet another resolution affirming the party’s steadfast opposition to gay marriage.
A simple resolution approved in a voice vote by the 157 members of the RNC said:
“The Republican National Committee affirms its support for marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and as the optimum environment in which to raise healthy children for the future of America.”
The resolution flies in the face of a trend of an increasing number of Republicans who are changing their positions on gay marriage but showcases that the party is still controled by a rabid right-wing element.
Conservatives worked up the resolution to try and quiet conservatives who say the party is becoming too mainstream and too in step with a majority of Americans. They want the GOP to keep the party in a bygone era of intolerance that includes homophobia, racism and bigotry.
Two GOP Senators — Rob Portman of Ohio and Mark Kirk of Illinois — have gone public with their support of gay marriage — a concept that virtually all Democrats in the Senate support but the RNC move shows the party of the elephants is still mired in the past.
How strong was the conservative backlash? The RNC also approved a resolution that supports “core values” of virtually unlimited gun ownership and use, marriage only between a man and woman, draconian border security and the standard hardcore opposition to abortion.
“The more things change, the more the Republican party stays the same,” longtime GOP activist Josh Samuelson told Capitol Hill Blue. Samuelson said he will be working for Democrats in upcoming elections.
The RNC also passed a resolution honoring former GOP Texas Rep. Ron Paul, the maverick right-winger who ran for President three times (once as a Libertarian, twice as a Republican) and lost overwhelmingly each time. Paul retired from Congress this year after a muddled career that included publication of a strongly racist newsletter, oddball stands on financial matters and many failed attempts to eliminate the Federal Reserve.
“It’s interesting,” says Joanna Kingston, another longtime but now disaffected Republican. “Nowadays, the only thing the Republicans can honor are failed ideas and failed elected officials.”
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Copyright 2013 Capitol Hill Blue
11 thoughts on “Republicans reaffirm homophobic stand on gay marriage, honor perennial loser Ron Paul”
All this “anti-gay marriage” prejudice now being spouted by GOP homophobes is simply one more “nail in the coffin” of the Republican Party.
Clearly, the far-right Christian bigots who are now firmly in control of the Republican Party are increasingly finding themselves farther and farther outside the mainstream of America.
Yet they STILL don’t have the faintest clue as to why they aren’t attracting more like-thinking, rabid followers.
Fortunately, the GOP’s homophobic bigotry is also now signaling a corresponding rise in the popularity of so-called “third parties”…such as the Libertarians and others who want to return fiscal responsibility to our Government while at the same time getting the Government’s nose out of our bedrooms.
I say, bring them on……
Nothing could be better for America than to have both political parities swing in the Ron (and Rand) Paul direction and embrace Libertarianism. Our party system is tainted and confused. True “Liberals” believe in individual freedom. The Democrats in America call themselves “Liberal” but are conservatively backing government as the best thing since sliced bread. The Republicans are generally called “conservative” but often want drastic change and sadly would use government as well to back socially conservative ideas. Both parties enjoy the good life in DC with our money and obey only the Lobbyists will.
It’s sad to watch CHB fall for the politics of division.
In fact, it might be funny to watch the Ron Paul zealots and tea party fanatics push a policy of “no compromise” and promote gridlock that brings the nation to a standstill if it weren’t for the destructive nature of both groups.
Until all sides and all extremes work together there can be no hope for progress or a solution to this nation’s problems.
What the hardcore right and left both preach is a never compromise approach that serves no purpose and, in our opinion, those who pledge allegiance to either cause have no allegiance to this nation or freedom.
Ron Paul ran a newsletter for decades and only during the period when he left the House and was back in TX w the newsletter published in DC did 10 articles out of decades of newsletter have some bad stuff. Contemporaneously he gave speeches on racist bias of drug war, and throughout medical practice gave free and discount med service, turning none away for inability to pay, never taking medicare/caid, many of these patients were members of minority groups. Choosing to push disprovable smears taints your image of…. um, lack of bias?
And Ron Paul’s opinion on gay marriage is that the govt has no business in marriage at all, which should be decided between individuals and religious organizations, where applicable.
You are welcome to your misinformed opinion. Our publisher worked in Congress during parts of Ron Paul’s terms and knew both the Congressman and his staff. He saw Paul and his then chief of staff in their most racist periods. He has written that Ron Paul is a racist, a liar and a crook and Paul, when contacted for comment, has not responded to any of those charges.
And yet nobody there can point to video or transcript of Paul actually saying or doing anything “racist.” All you have is poorly sourced imaginations from the dandy communist Jamie Kirchick.
This is before, during, and after an election cycle where Republicans ran a candidate who dodged the draft so that he could travel abroad and spread a religion which at the time (and until 1978) taught that blacks are not fully human beings.
Mitt gets a complete pass for actual racism, Paul is smeared by a few politically incorrect and out of context quips.
I say your “publisher” is probably the racist, liar, and crook. God knows that nobody there could pick journalistic ethics out of a lineup.
Yeah, funny thing about the pathetically pious Paul partisans. You claim your hero didn’t write the racist bile in his newsletter and never admitted so.
Yet in December 2011 he admitted on WHO-AM radio in Iowa that he did write some of the newsletters that he previously claimed no responsibility for. In 1996, in an interview with the Dallas Morning News, he refused to deny that he wrote a 1992 newsletter that said “if you have ever been robbed by a blacked teenaged male, you know how unbelievably feet of foot they can be.”
When asked about that newsletter by the Dallas Morning news in 1996, Paul said “if you try to catch someone that has stolen a purse from you, there is no chance to catch them.”
The Dallas paper also said Paul defended his claim that “we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in Washington, DC are semi-criminal or entirely criminal.”
The Dallas paper found many other instances where Paul defended the racist contents of his newsletters published under his name, including claims that the late Rep. Barbara Morton was “a moron and a fraud.” He also defended his claim that “only about five percent of blacks have sensible political opinions.”
Not racist? Not hardly. As our past stories have documented, Paul created the newsletters to help pay off the debts he faced after he lost his seat Congress. In the newsletters that he frequently defended, he called Dr. Martin Luther King a pedophile and “lying socialist satyr.” One column he wrote he bragged that ‘even in my little town of Lake Jackson, Texas, I’ve urged everyone in my family to know how to use a gun…for the animals are coming.”
His attitudes towards gays? He wrote: “I miss the closet. Homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities.”
Like most politicians, Paul speaks out of both sides of his mouth. He is a hypocrite and a liar.
Like I said, all you have is the “newsletters” and no other evidence that Paul has done or said anything “racist.”
Your arguments against Paul are pathetically thin. You have nothing else to support your argument that Paul is a racist. Give it up, leftist.
And like we said, Paul has given interviews defending his racist comments in newsletters and even expanding upon them. Like so many who adhere to the Ron Paul cult you ignore facts. Too bad. And, as the history of this site proves, we are neither right nor left. We treat both sides with equal disrespect. Too bad that fact also eludes you. 🙂
KJ, you are correct about how Congressman Ron Paul views social issues. But, he was prochoice when he ran as a Libertarian and then an Independent.
The RNC (Republican National Committee) knows that the bath they took in the last election will permanently scar them unless they change course and stay firmly in the pocket of the religious right. As a Catholic, his personal preferences will always come from the Vatican but his respect for the Constitution allows him to leave personal, social choices to the individual.
One only has to read the words of Pat Robertson to understand the focus from the GOP since the end of WW2. In 1999, there was a group of LP members and the leaders of the GOP who decided to soften up the GOP and blend it with the LP. I was at that conference and I became aware of how to run a campaign as a Republican but lean firmly into the LP. The group was called the Republican Liberty Caucus but it had little emphasis in the GOP.
When the GOP House managed to Impeach Clinton, they began to lean into the words of Robertson and the other Theocrats. I was very sorry to learn that the GOP won that battle. I was a Republican at that time but very embarrassed at the words and actions of a party that had been mine since Ike.
I stayed a Ron Paul supporter all those years because I understood his keeping his personal opinions away from his political votes.
Dr. Paul will not run again but he may be too old (he’s younger than me) to stand up to an abrasive group of ugly theocrats.
My many years of supporting the GOP was based on the Separation of Church and State. This was erased by President Bush “W” and added to many of his actions kept me out of the GOP from then on.p
There is no more Republican Party for many of us. For Dr. Paul to balance his politics has caused a great deal of trouble. I simply packed up and ripped up my voter registration card.
We never seem to let losers die a dignified death and I’m certain Ron Paul will be picked to death to give someone the last word.
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