(Cindy McCain, left, and Meghan McCain, right)
Margaret Hoover, Fox News Commentator and grandaughter of GOP President Herbert Hoover: Some Republicans support gay rights, but prefer progress through legislative action or majority rule at the ballot box, rather than judicial action. But what if a democratic election imposes mandates that violate a citizen’s constitutional freedom? In the event that majority rule insufficiently protects individual liberty, our system of checks and balances puts forth that it is the role of the courts, to guarantee and protect the rights to individual Americans.
That’s why the Supreme Court, in 1967 Loving v. Virginia, legalized interracial marriage –six years after our current president was born to an interracial couple. At that time 73% of the population opposed “miscegenation.” How long would it have taken to change popular opinion, for the minority to democratically win their constitutional rights? As Martin Luther King, Jr. famously asserted, “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
For those of you who would label me a "RINO" (Republican In Name Only) for taking this stand, I direct you to Vice President Cheney, whose conservative credentials are impeccable, and who answered a question on the topic before the National Press Club audience on June 1, 2009 by saying simply, “…freedom means freedom for everyone.”
Please visit Facebook page Republicans for Marriage Equality and American Equal Rights Foundation to follow the details of the trial.
Steve Schmidt, McCain's Chief Campaign Strategist: "I'm personally supportive of [marriage] equality for gay couples and I believe that it will happen over time. I think that more and more Americans are insistent that, at a minimum, gay couples should be treated with respect and when they see a political party trying to stigmatize a group of people who are hardworking, who play by the rules, who raise decent families, they're troubled by it.
I think the Republican Party should not be seen by a broad majority of the electorate as focused with singularity on issues like gay marriage. The attitudes of voters about gay marriage and about domestic partnership benefits for gay couples are changing very rapidly and for voters under the age of 30, they are completely disconnected from what has been Republican orthodoxy on these issues.
Any campaign that would go out and try to demonize people on the basis of their sexual orientation is abhorrent and I suspect that that campaign would be rejected."
Republican San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders: "I could not bring myself to tell an entire group of people that they were unequal . . . I couldn't look them in the face and tell them their relationships were any less meaningful than the relationship I shared with my wife."
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