Over at the main page, Mike posed the following question:
If the GOP announced today that they have been wrong about gay marriage, asked for forgiveness and called for an immediate legalization in all 50 states… would you be any more inclined to vote for them in the next election?
Surveying the comments, it seems that most were in line with mine. In essence, while a change in its stance on same-sex marriage would incline us more toward voting for the GOP, it alone would not be enough to get us to change our vote itself. If I understand Mike’s interpretation of these answers correctly, it was that a change in its position would not get more votes for the Republican Party, and thus is does not make political sense for them to do so. With my sincerest respect and admiration for him, I must say that this is a flawed conclusion to come to.
For my part, I would still almost certainly vote against the GOP in upcoming elections even if they moderated their stance on SSM. While SSM is an issue of paramount importance to me, there are too many other issues on which their positions and mine are widely divergent. A change in position is necessary but not sufficient for me to give them my vote. So why do I think they should say they were wrong anyway?
Because if they asked for my forgiveness, I would give it to them.
My religious beliefs are amorphous, subject to change and fraught with doubt. But if there is anything foundational to both my spirituality and my notion of civic virtue, it is the belief that all of us will find ourselves in need of grace at some point in our lives, and that redemption lies in reconciliation. It brings me no joy to despise the Republican Party. But with its insistence on thrusting a plank supporting an anti-SSM constitutional amendment into the eye of its platform, it leaves me no option.
For me (and I claim to speak for nobody but myself), it would simply be enough if they would say they were sorry to restore a measure of my respect for them, which after years of being demonized and treated like a political hacky sack instead of an actual human being lies in blasted smithereens in a dusty, windblown corner of my memory. I would not even need them to change their position wholesale, which would doubtless be a bridge too far. Simply to say “We are sorry for using you as part of a GOTV strategy. We are sorry for saying equality for you is an existential threat to American families [a statement as raw and painful as it is absurd]. While too many of us cannot support marriage equality outright, we will no longer actively prosecute opposition to it as a political goal or tactic.” That would be enough.
I would forgive them.
Obviously we all care about the outcomes of elections. For people kind enough to read what I write here, I suspect they are the sort who care deeply. And we all have different beliefs about who and how best to run the country. But aren’t elections merely our way of trying to secure leaders and policies we think will make our nation more just, free and prosperous? Isn’t a better America our true end, with electoral politics merely a means to get there? If we focus on the latter at the expense of the former, is that not a failure?
To me, it seems that maintaining (and, when necessary, restoring) our bonds of mutual affection as citizens is a good unto itself, requiring no further justification. If changing or softening its stance on SSM is a step toward healing a pretty serious rift, why is that not reason enough to strive for it? The truth is that it hurt to see state after state constitutionally ban marriage equality. We grieved when it was snatched away from us in Maine two years ago. Isn’t trying to heal those wounds a good enough reason to change the Republican position, even if not a single vote changed with it? Doesn’t focusing on the votes miss the point of why politics matters in the first place?
I would love to hear the Republicans say they were sorry for their position on same-sex marriage. I hope to hear those words Mike wrote actually uttered sometime in my life. I want to sit next to them, even in principled opposition, and try to find a better way of understanding each other on other issues.
I long for them to ask for my forgiveness. I want to forgive them, and I would.
Russell,
One thing I would clarify is that while I don’t think there is a political motivation for the GOP to make a move like that…I’m not saying it wouldn’t be right to do so. The problem of course is that large groups almost never apologize in politics. At best we might get an individual apology when someone is caught doing something bad, or in rare cases the government might acknowledge they treated some group poorly in the past (American Indians, Japanese during WWII, etc).
What I was really trying to suss out of the respondents was whether or not that single issue was the primary obstacle to them voting for a Republican. With some folks it seems it was. Several people mentioned they were conservatively-inclined but found the SSM opposition to be a deal-breaker. For others it was more complicated and they wanted to see movement on other issues. For still others, yourself included, they honestly admitted that they were liberally-inclined and it really wouldn’t make a difference other than to make them respect he GOP a little more.
The biggest obstacle I see to any kind of en masse apology (other than a lack of flying pigs) is that Republicans resent the way we are still blamed for not supporting civil rights for black. I can’t tell you how many times I have been called a racist because I oppose affirmative action or because I think welfare reform was the best thing Clinton did. So many Republicans are never going to feel safe apologizing. I think the best we can hope for is a slow and quiet acceptance, which I believe is happening now.
I’d say the problem with the last paragraph is that we still haven’t had any kind of reckoning with the way race is used politically by… let’s say “certain groups”. Notably, it wasn’t REPUBLICANS who opposed civil rights for blacks; it was white southerners, who were generally more likely to be found in the Democratic Party at the time (and certainly it was the Democratic Party of its day that opposed emancipation). The problem is that you had an entire generation (or two? three?) of political operatives who used things like the “southern strategy” to drum up white racial resentment and propel the Republican Party to power. Even through the 80s and 90s, you had your welfare queens and Willie Hortons and such. These were explicitly racialized appeals to angry white voters who nursed lingering resentment about racial equality. And you see things like the Pew survey recently that showed Obama’s support among white voters waaaaaaay lower in the South than any other region. It’s not insane to come to the conclusion that all of these things are related.
Which is not to say that you are a racist, because I don’t think you are. But the Republican Party is a very white party full of old southerners who have some pretty outmoded instincts about race – even if those instincts aren’t consciously racist! In fact, I would go one liberal step further and implicate pretty much all white people in this kind of blindness to some degree or another, but conservatives really hate when I do that.
I consider it nothing short of astonishing that somewhere around a quarter of LGB’s vote Republican. That number is falling, and I expect it to as SSM is in sight and the Republicans oppose it (the GOP may have gotten some leeway as it was seen as outside the realm of realistic probability).
Large numbers of LGB’s are going to continue to vote D simply because they are more liberal and voting D is what liberals do. Of course, a part of the reason that they are more generally liberal is that has been the coalition that has their back* and the other coalition is the one that has actively denigrated and opposed them. For at least some, I think the effects of that would wear off and they’d be more inclined to identify by their economic station or by other social identifiers. Especially for those coming of age.
At least that’s my possibly offensive view.
* – I really hope this doesn’t sound like I am trivializing the gay mind as it goes to voting. Well, maybe I am, but no more or less than I do other groups. The League and it’s people-who-spend-a-lot-of-time-thinking-about-such-things aside, this is how I believe a large percentage of every demographic works.
Well executed; as wonderful a piece as I had hoped for.
You hear stories about the folks in Puritan New England and how silly they must have been to hang witches (wouldn’t, you know, a witch have some pretty decent counter-offensive capabilities?) and we think we know better than that today.
And then we look at how cruel certain subsets of the religious folks are to certain subsets of the population in the name of their religion.
I hope our society looks back at this sort of thing one day with the same incredulity. “How could they have believed that? Why were they so angry? How did they put so much more effort into being cruel to people who weren’t doing anything?”
And folks can shrug and shake their heads and laugh sadly at us for being backwards people who just didn’t know any better.
And that’s a little bit of the problem. I think there are/were a significant number of conservatives who opposed gay marriage for secular reasons. I was one of them. That’s also why an apology is complicated. I am glad I came around to SSM but I am not ashamed of my previous opposition. It wasn’t based in hate. I’ve never had a problem with gays and lesbians personally and counted several of them as friends. I wasn’t even really that opposed to them getting married. I just wasn’t convinced for a long time that gay parents were equivelant to a straight couple in terms of raising a well-adjusted child. That means that while I’m glad I came around, it’s hard to ask forgiveness when your opposition was not intended to hurt.
it’s hard to ask forgiveness when your opposition was not intended to hurt
This is a fundamental disconnect we have around all of these kinds of conversations. It strikes me as just totally insane to say that, as long as you didn’t mean to hurt someone, it’s irrelevant if you actually hurt them.
Opposition to same sex marriage is a position that is completely and totally unjustified on the merits. It causes suffering to people for no reason other than the discomfort of people who are doing their level best to pull the ladder up behind them. Taking a position that is destructive to other people’s lives that serves no material purpose is bad no matter why you take the position. And it’s just not appropriate to say, “Oops, well, I didn’t mean anything, bro, let’s be friends.” While that may be less cruel than the alternative, it’s no less patronizing, and it’s no more responsive to the fact that you have denied people their humanity.
Mindless tub-thumping.
totally insane to say that, as long as you didn’t mean to hurt someone, it’s irrelevant if you actually hurt them.
Negligently, recklessly, knowingly, willfully, intentionally, maliciously, sadistically
Each state of mind conveys a certain manner of thought.
It’s a relation of the actor to the act.
Really, this alone begs the question of the level of duty of care.
Opposition to same sex marriage is a position that is completely and totally unjustified on the merits.
Is this true in all cases?
Suppose there was a bill that did away with funding for NPR and school lunches, but made SSM ok by the feds, provided the state okayed it.
In the real world, sometimes competing interests need to be brought into balance.
Taking a position that is destructive to other people’s lives that serves no material purpose is bad no matter why you take the position.
If you can prove damages, sue.
Forum shop a bit, and go for it.
Ryan,
“It strikes me as just totally insane to say that, as long as you didn’t mean to hurt someone, it’s irrelevant if you actually hurt them.”
That seems ironic coming from you based on your behavior as of late, but regardless, let’s assume a seemingly harmless belief you probably hold: Cell phones are good. They help people communicate. They can help you access information. They can save a life in an emergency.
Five years from now you discover that cell phones cause brain cancer.
You never intended for anyone to get brain cancer with your advocacy, but they did. You thought your cell phone advocacy was based on good science, even if later proved false. Do you apologize?
The problem with that analogy is that “cell phones” are inanimate objects and “parenthood” is (ideally) one of the most important relationships people can have with other people. To think that any particular type of person can’t be equally good at that relationship as other types, is to say that there is something fundamentally wrong with the type of person they are. To make that mistake (unlike the cell phone mistake) is to wrongfully categorize *actual people*, and thus deserve a full and genuine apology. Much like believing sincerely that someone is a thief, a liar, or has violently harmed another person, and then publicizing that belief, believing sincerely that someone isn’t as capable of being a good parent as others, and publicizing that belief, is a way of slandering them. And slander, once discovered, deserves an apology. Even if it’s communal rather than individual.
(er, that line should’ve gone “Much like believing sincerely, but wrongly,” in both cases. Which was obviously when I wrote it – but not so much so reading it.)
I understand where you’re coming from, and if the issue were simply a matter of one-on-one, then that would be the end of it.
But the fact of the matter is that children (for better or worse) pick up their ideas of how males relate to women and how females relate to men– normalizing– from their parents. And it’s set in stone by about age 5.
The issue then becomes one of what manner of effect is there in the absence of one gender within these normalizing relationships.
Is it pretty much the same as a single parent?
Honest question. I’m wondering.
Maribou,
The position of myself and I think most other conservatives who previously opposed SSM was not about inability to parent. Our objection was more along the lines that a same-sex couple could not give a developing child everything they needed from a gender perspective. It was a perceived flaw in have two parents of the same gender and the kid missing 50% of the ‘input’ they would need. It’s the same logic that many people apply when saying that single-mother homes in the black community are problematic. She could be the best mother in the world but there’s still a amissing father.
With that in mind (and re-iterating that I have changed that view) my opposition was not about saying those indivduals were flawed.
@Will H —
The question of same-sex parenting has been uncoupled from SSM for quite some time, as same-sex parents have been allowed to adopt around the country for a generation. Since we already had the right to raise children, using child-rearing as an objection to legalizing marriage seems a retrograde argument.
Further, (as Real Name me has publicly testified), there is sufficient evidence to support a stance that children raised in stable same-sex households thrive just like their peers in “traditional” families. The AAP is on record as strongly supporting same-sex parents, so it seems a settled question.
As far as how one socializes one’s child with regard to establishing healthy opposite-sex relations, it’s simply a matter of providing your child with a diverse number of loving adults in all different kinds of families. Our children are surrounded by innumerable grown-ups who love them, a great many of whom are straight couples with kids of their own. Something something takes a village, you know?
Russell,
Just as an aside, this very topic came up with my two teenage daughters when we were discussing the upcoming election a couple of weeks ago. My wife an I were playing devil’s advocate with them on a number of issues and we brought up the absence of a parent of the opposite gender in SSM homes. Both of them gave us that look that teenagers do so well which is a mixture of disgust and pity for how dumb/lame mom and dad are. Then they both brought up how many adults they have in their lives that they could get all of that stuff from.
My kids have been raised in a conservative household, but they have always been encouraged to figure things out ontheir own and not just parrot what we say. So my long-winded point here is that while SSM has been a complicated issue with Generation X and older, the generations below us seem to have it figured out. It’s literally a non-issue for most of them.
And unless the republican party walks changes its mind about gay issues now-ish, it’ll be getting those same “disgust and pity” looks from basically everyone in your daughters’ generation, and perhaps the next one as well.
The GOP needs to decide very soon whether it wants to be competitive in 2016, or to be competitive for the next forty years afterwords. It’s one or the other.
I know that the whole “NO! YOU HAVE TO FULLY REPUDIATE SATAN AND ALL OF HIS WORKS!” song and dance always drives me nuts whenever I change my mind on something so I want to avoid that.
With that said, “I didn’t mean to hurt anybody” is one of those statements that sounds better as a preface to certain explanations than others.
Also, I’m tired of flogging this, because we’ll never make any progress, but this
I am not ashamed of my previous opposition.
is not a thing I can ever imagine saying about something I was wrong about. Especially when my wrongness harmed other people for reasons I am now willing to admit are totally specious. It just betrays an utter lack of regard for the dignity of anyone but myself.
Once upon a time, I was pro-life.
I arrived at that position, in my late teens, by reasoning that since it is unclear when “personhood” begins, it might be the case that “personhood” begins at conception and if it turns out that’s the case, anything less than a complete ban on abortion was a legal sanction of the killing of a human being who had done nothing to earn or require that death. To this day, that strikes me as a completely secular, internally consistent, and even morally defensible position to take.
Today, I am pro-choice. Over time, I changed my mind from the philosophical position I describe in the above paragraph. I came to realize that I did not want to see a woman who had sought out and obtained an abortion be sent to prison, nor did I want to see a doctor who performed the abortion be sent to prison. Even if what was going on was an act of killing a human being, the moral gravity of an abortion was not one that merited society depriving someone of their liberty — which is what I began, in retrospection naively slowly, to realize that the pro-life position would ultimately demand of the law. I really didn’t think through the criminal law implications of pro-life advocacy fully until law school. My current stance on abortion may be a less morally defensible position than the one I adopted in my more conservative youth and I have rather squishy sorts of reasons for taking the position I do today. Nevertheless, that is where I’m at right now.
Should I apologize for having had my first posture — even though, if I had been able at that time to realize the policy goals I advocated then, I’d have helped created a world that I now realize would be a terrible place to be? Because I don’t think I was ever morally in the wrong; I don’t think I ever adopted a position on this very sensitive issue in bad faith or from a desire to actually cause harm to anyone. When I realized that if I were to get my way the resulting laws would hurt people who did not deserve it, I changed my position. But not having thought things through all the way in the past doesn’t mean that I was being evil or acting in bad faith.
Does it matter (for purposes of determining whether an apology is owed) that my more youthful pro-life position was never realized in policy, as opposed to present-day anti-SSM positions enshrined into public policy?
If I accidentally ran you over with my car and killed you, should I feel bad about it?
Of course you should. I’m not arguing that negligence equals blamelessness.
But we’re not talking about killing people here. We’re talking about adopting a position on a political issue and the role of apology in subsequently reversing that position. It seems unnecessarily stern to say that having once been wrong on an issue, you’re going to carry around the moral stain of your previous error for life. It’s not like killing someone. The prior mistake was reached in good faith. Good faith is a different state of mind than negligence.
So the question remains, is an apology for a prior good faith mistake necessary for forgiveness?
But we’re not talking about killing people here.
Given the high rate of suicide among gay teens, I’m not so sure we’re not talking about that.
I’ve no wish to downplay either the gravity of the high rate of suicide and attempted suicide amongst gay teens, nor the importance of SSM as a civil rights issue. That said… I think that’s sort of a red herring.
Granted, I’ve never been a suicidal gay teen myself, so I’m only guessing here. But are these kids trying to suicide because they believe that they won’t ever get married? Seems like (for example) bullies at school threatening and in some cases physically abusing them, intolerant parents and authority figures, teasing and mocking administered by peers, and the powerful loneliness resulting from inability to find sympathetic friends would be much more powerful and immediate causes of this sort of awful psychological stress than the SSM laws.
At most, a state’s anti-SSM laws will be one star in a big, complex constellation. I suspect that it is a star of middling magnitude at that — personal rejection by a parent (or even fear of such rejection) seems like it would almost certainly outshine the state of the law about marriage for a distraught and confused gay teenager. Shifting the SSM laws is one part of shifting larger the cultural milleu, yes. But a kid in, say, Maryland who is mortally afraid that if he comes out of the closet, his intolerant dad will disown him, kick him out of the house, and stop loving him very probably isn’t going to find the courage to have that talk with his father just because 51.2% of the voters said “yes” on Question 6.
Besides, we don’t need to escalate SSM advocacy a life or death matter in order for it to be an issue of profound importance. Equal treatment of people by the law is more than enough gravity. And this still doesn’t answer the question about whether reversals of political opinions require apologies.
Especially when my wrongness harmed other people…
Show the chain of causation where even one person’s harm is directly attributable to Mike’s former beliefs.
I want a specific, and not a generality.
It would be foolish to suppose that people in general are subject to Mike’s belief.
I’m really not invested in pinning this on Mike’s belief. I am very fond of Mike, and would prefer to make this as not about him and his beliefs as possible.
That said, Individual Conservative’s Beliefs inform his vote against SSM. SSM remains without legal sanction as a result of an aggregate of such votes. A gay man is barred from his partner’s bedside as he dies. A lesbian is forced to pay tax on her partner’s health benefits. Etc.
If you think the lack of marriage equality is not a source of harm, I would beg to differ. And that lack is sustained by the beliefs of those who oppose it. Is the one the direct cause of the other? No. Does it contribute toward it? Yes.
Oh, I didn’t think you were.
But I just didn’t like seeing somebody jump on Mike, for what I believe was unjust cause.
If there’s cause, then go for it. Fair’s fair.
But now we’re getting somewhere.
It’s about a contributory factor.
Also, there’s the issue of intervening factors; ie indirect damages.
Now, I went to go take a look at the text of DOMA, and what I see is just a policy relating to benefits from the federal gov’t– nothing else.
Maybe I’m missing something here.
Now, those indirect damages that you refer to:
I still see those as probate issues.
Those are things that state courts determine.
Now, state courts can and do legalize SSM.
But I really think that’s beyond the federal gov’t, except under admiralty law.
Or is it really opposition at the state level that you’re upset about?
I kind of thought it was the big-wigs at the nat’l level.
I’m willing to be instructed here.
Wait – are you saying when the GOP began running on DOM there was no intention other than a concern regarding federal benefit distribution?
That’s what it looks like to me.
I really don’t believe they have subject matter jurisdiction over any other aspect of it.
Didn’t look like that to me.
To me it looked like anxiety. “Oh noes the gheys are becoming socially acceptable! If we don’t pass these laws now, soon enough we’ll never be able to pass them!”
To me it looked like a wedge issue. “Hey, Christian voters, come on out to the polls to protect marriage from people who want to get married! And while you’re there, why not vote for Republican candidates?”
To me it looked like cultural Burkeanism escalated to reactionary levels. “Change is bad, mmmkay? Having gay folk around being… all gay ‘n stuff, that’s different than the way things are now. So that’s bad, mmkay?”
And for quite a lot of folks, it looked to me like bigotry.
I understand that’s the way that it played out in the enactment of it.
But to look at the text of it, I can’t believe they would really be all that excited about it.
Will, in addition to federal recognition, it also established that the federal government would play no role in encouraging or forcing to recognize marriages from other states. The ramifications of this were and are unclear, but it makes the Full Faith & Credit argument for at least the recognition of out-of-state marriages more difficult. The role of FFC and marriage is yet unresolved, but for the courts to rule it applies they have to supercede not only state laws but federal laws as well. Saying, in essence, that not only can FFC be forced on the states, but that the federal government has no power to prevent it. These could prove to be pretty substantial hurdles for the movement.
I really don’t believe they have subject matter jurisdiction over any other aspect of it.
I’m pretty sure they think they have jurisdiction over public morals.
@Will T:
Still, that doesn’t look like it changes anything.
Take a look at this.
The the Full Faith & Credit statute from Wisconsin regarding foreign injunctions.
They have to conform to the state standards regarding one of the four types of available injunctions, and then there’s some due process requirements, etc.
But since the domestic relations exception (which is a doctrine established by the judiciary, flying in the face of diversity jurisdiction), the federal government has no authority to step in and throw its weight around.
Marriage and its dissolution, child custody and support obligations, and probate issues: the feds have nothing to do with them (well, as little as possible).
In some instances, like those involving bankruptcy, the federal government actually does have some say in those things; which is typically to go along with the states.
That actually grants some protections under federal law that often don’t exist under state law; notably in the federal jurisprudence that forfeiture of rights is distinct from waiver of rights, in that rights may never be waived unknowingly.
But it looks the same to me.
In fact, at this point, I’m not even sure what the fuss is about, other than the states haven’t moved fast enough for some.
It may be hard to ask forgiveness when you didn’t intend hurt, but I don’t think that means there’s nothing to be sorry for or that asking forgiveness is somehow wrong or unwarranted.
From the Al Chet:
‘For the sin which we have committed before You under duress or willingly.
And for the sin which we have committed before You by hard-heartedness.
For the sin which we have committed before You inadvertently.
…
And for the sin which we have committed before You intentionally or unintentionally…’
I know that probably isn’t your religious tradition, but I think there’s something similar in most. We don’t mean to do harm, often even have the best of intentions, but when those intentions turn out to cause harm (and I’d argue that upholding or supporting ideas that lead to discrimination did at least some harm to someone), just writing it off doesn’t seem quite right either.
I’m not sure who specifically you’d apologize to, but acknowledging that your previous position was harmful (rather than defending it as nothing to be ashamed of) would be a minimum.
Just to clarify, this post isn’t really meant to argue that individual conservatives or one-time SSM opponents need offer some kind of public mea culpa or say they’re sorry to every gay couple they meet. I actually tried to make clear that I understand the principled objection of some to SSM in the OP. (I do think it bears saying that the sincerity undergirding the opposition doesn’t mitigate the difficulties created in the lives of gays and lesbians or the hard feelings those difficulties engendered.)
No, I want contrition from the party that cynically manipulated the issue to its own advantage, blithely indifferent to the real people it hurt. I’d like (though have zero expectation of receiving) an apology from the likes of Karl Rove, who I am quite certain doesn’t give a pig’s testicle about gay rights one way or the other, but knew quite well how to push the issue to get his guy in the Oval Office. I’d like an apology from one Willard “Mitt” Romney, who couldn’t abandon his previous pro-gay positions fast enough when it was politically expedient, and who tossed a trusted gay advisor under the bus because he had the temerity to want marriage equality for himself.
Would it be nice if true believers who’ve changed their minds acknowledged that their sincerely-held former beliefs were the source of pain for other people? Sure. But that’s not something I’m inclined to demand. From the Grand Old Party? I’m waiting, boys, and the clock is ticking.
I really doubt you’re going to get it, as of course do you.
Have Democrats apologized for advocating slavery and Jim Crow in the Bad Old Days? We don’t care, because they’ve not only reversed that position, they’ve meaningfully reversed it and they are now a party that has a substantial claim to being a good advocate for the black population.
The best you can hope for, realistically, is that the GOP lifts its opposition to SSM and allows SSM to become part of the law of the land. And after the fact, we’ll all be treated with the spectacle of Republicans saying that they were never opposed to SSM and look at all these Democrats who were.
Of course I am not such a fool as to really expect an apology.
Which is why I suspect my esteem for the Republican Party will remain a pile of blasted smithereens, collected in a dusty, windblown corner of my memory for quite some time to come.
But what if there were something else in place of the meaningful apology that you wanted?
I mean something substantial, like inclusion of sexual orientation as a protected class for purposes of employment or hate crimes?
Or is it really a matter of just the one thing, and nothing else?
I’m sorry to say that I don’t fully understand your question.
If the GOP were to completely jettison all mention of sexual orientation, same-sex marriage, gay rights, etc. from its platform, would I be satisfied? Of course. I would be an idiot not to be.
But, silly little human being that I am, I’d still really like Someone Important to say “we’re really sorry. We made your life worse, and we regret that.” It might make me feel better, and I cannot help this tendency to feel things that I have.
Ok, I’ll try again.
Suppose you never got the apology you want from the GOP, but instead you got some form of meaningful action like that mentioned above.
Would you accept the meaningful action as an effective (in the sense of “acting to the effect of”) apology?
Would some sort of meaningful action serve to lower the heat under my contempt for the Republican Party? Yes. Would this outcome, at a certain point, practically resemble the effects of my having forgiven them? Probably. Are they the same thing? No.
So here’s my own take on, Will H:
Sure, maybe there’s an action that counts as an apology. But supporting laws that prevent people from being fired for their sexual orientation? That’s not it. That’s the action equivalent of “I’m sorry if people misinterpreted my comments”. That’s the lame-ass nonpology people make when they’ve been caught doing something wrong and don’t want to get in trouble for it. Well, that’s not enough for me, and I don’t think it’s going to be enough for other gay people either.
Hate crimes and employment non-discrimination aren’t a way of showing support for gays. They’re things that even people who object to homosexuality support unless they’re dicks.
In 2008, leading up to proposition 8 in California, I had a chance to talk to a polite Mormon woman who was trying to take away my right to get married. Even she agreed that people shouldn’t be fired for being gay. And that was several years ago, from someone who was actively opposed to gay rights. So championing that cause in 2016, or whenever the republicans come around to it, isn’t going to win them any brownie points from me.
@Russell:
I understand.
Remember, I was a life-long Democrat that came of age in the Reagan years; and I went from far left to center-left to center-right without really changing all that much.
And to be honest, I never have really forgiven the Republicans for Reagan, much less Bush II.
I try to overlook it as best I can.
@Alan:
The question was posed more in the way of the CC’s telling me:
Don’t waste my time telling me you’re sorry. If you’re really sorry, show me.
So, it was really a question of how much showing would need to be done in place of spoken words.
But as to the issues you bring up:
Why are these issues against the Republicans when the Democrats have been just as negligent in not championing those types of laws?
I think the R’s might have less culpability in inaction, simply in wanting to be more reserved in legislation (theoretically).
Individual Democrats have, including George Wallace and even the monster Robert Byrd.
Hey, as we all know, the Democrat’s should’ve ever be shamed by the fact he was a member of the KKK!
OTOH, if you talk about the fact the Mormon Church thought blacks were second-class citizens until the mid-70’s, you’re a dirty liberal hack!