Family Research Council: We Could Support Gay SCOTUS, But Not One With “Pro-Gay Ideology”
Yesterday I reported that the religious right group Focus on the Family said that they wouldn’t oppose an openly-gay nominee to the Supreme Court on the basis of their sexual orientation.
Now a second top religious right organization, Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council, is declaring something similar — it’s a shift in emphasis from its harder-line stance against gay judges two years ago, and another sign of the changing times.
To be sure, the group is hedging a bit. Its position : Being gay would not in and of itself rule out getting the group’s support, though having a “pro-gay ideology” would.
“We don’t think that the process of selecting a Supreme Court justice should include asking questions about a person’s personal sex life,” Peter Sprigg, senior fellow at the Family Research Council, told me moments ago.
“But if a person does publicly identify as gay or lesbian, or particularly if a person has been involved with homosexual rights activism at any level, then there would have to be serious questions asked about whether he or she would impose a pro-gay ideology on the court.”
Sprigg added that homosexuality in and of itself would not be a “determinant” against the acceptability of the nominee.
That’s not as hard-line as two years ago, when the Family Research Council argued: “We don’t accept that homosexuality is any kind of cultural identity that should be sought in a judge.”
To be sure, it’s unlikely that either of these groups would support any Obama nominee, simply because of philosophical differences. But the unwillingness of these groups to rule out opposition to an openly-gay nominee is a big sign of how much things have shifted towards tolerance of gays and lesbians.
Goups that see homosexuality as a fundamentally illegitimate and morally questionable lifestyle are no longer willing to say openly that its a disqualifier from serving on the highest court.
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The petering-out of homosexuality as a social-wedge issue over the last few years is, to me, remarkable and very surprising.
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Maybe part of the equation is disillusionment with the GOP after having seen how they picked everybody’s pockets. Their emphasis on cultural conformism just seems not nearly so important anymore.
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Another factor might be Obama’s articulation of what it means to be Christian. The message of charity and forgiveness is much more powerful than Biblical faux-literalism. (I’m tempted to be thankful to Rick Warren for helping there, but it’s easier for now to just indulge my comfortable cynicism.)
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The GOP has always used otherness as an effective tool. Blacks, commies, hippies, homos, immigrants, etc. But the power of that fear card seems to be waning — at least for now, with the severity of the economic crisis. Is it too much to hope that this is really a long-term systemic trend?
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no argument here, Jzap. I think it’s striking.
O Noesssss! It’s teh gay! They’re going to turn me into a lesbian, aren’t they, with teh Pro-Gay Ideology?! I mean, it’s irresistible, to judge by the numbers of Republican politicians and Religious Right “men of god” who have succumbed to teh Gay Ideology in public bathrooms and rest stops, etc. It doesn’t take much to push us heteros over the edge to Teh Gay!!!!!!
“I think it’s striking.”
Guys, here is what is really striking to me – how damn quickly the religious right gave up and said they’d lost the culture war, and how damn quickly everything turned around and Iowa suddenly decided that all Americans have the same rights. It was almost overnight, once the election was over. The sun actually came up, finally, after 8 years.
Kinda makes me question whether I’ve been excessive in my knee-jerk cynicism all these years.
” Kinda makes me question whether I’ve been excessive in my knee-jerk cynicism all these years.”
I’m going to have that engraved and framed.
;p
So, you can be on the Supreme Court and be gay as long as you hate yourself for being gay? Hhmm.
Ohsuzanna,
No, but you can be a republican.
self – hating **** are the kind republicans love best!
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Holy shіt, Batman! The WaPo censorware won’t even let someone say gаys???
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(h/t unicode cyrillic)
“Holy shіt, Batman! The WaPo censorware won’t even let someone say gаys???”
Yeah, can you believe it?
SMH
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