Posted on 04/24/2015 7:09:52 AM PDT by Kaslin
In a year and a half, Americans will elect a new president. What issues will be foremost in their minds? Allow me to set the table for you:
The U.S. economic recovery is anemic at best, with long-term joblessness still a major problem confronting millions of Americans. Income inequality has widened, and poverty has increased.
In the past six years, scandal has shaken the VA, the IRS, ATF, the Justice Department and most recently the DEA, which is why it's not surprising that Americans name "government" the most important problem facing the country today, according to Gallup.
Overseas, the Islamic State now holds huge swaths of Iraq and Syria, an area larger than many countries, and the group continues to recruit Westerners to join in its murderous rampage. Iran is emerging as a dominant power in the Middle East, and Russia is again bullying Eastern Europe.
And yet with all of this (and plenty more) in the background, some in the media believe the most pressing question to ask the 2016 Republican contenders and would-be contenders is: Would you attend a gay wedding?
If this were an innocent question, a normal reaction from someone vying to be the leader of the free world might be, "Huh?" But the question is far from guileless, and so the contenders have felt compelled to oblige.
Marco Rubio says he would, Scott Walker says he already has, Rick Perry says he probably would and Rick Santorum says he would not. Ted Cruz is thus far the only contender who has dared to suggest that there may be more important problems facing the nation than whether or not he graces a hypothetical gay couple with his presence.
As he is wont to do, Jon Stewart summed it up best: "This election is going to boil down to, Who do you trust to pick up the phone at 3 a.m. -- and RSVP to a gay wedding?"
What must our neighbors and friends overseas be thinking of us? We are the greatest superpower on the planet, and we're worried about whether or not our future president would show up at a gay wedding?
It's almost too ripe for mockery to take it seriously. Yet take it seriously we must, for a few important reasons.
As Ben Domenech has pointed out, implied in the question is the troubling belief that freedom of association should suddenly be conditional. "Conservatives and (most) libertarians believe people ought to be able to decide whether to freely associate with others themselves," he wrote in the Federalist. They should not be "dragooned."
I'm a conservative who supports gay marriage. I've been to gay weddings, and they were lovely. But I believe others should have the permission to be uncomfortable or unwilling -- which, incidentally, is not the same thing as bigoted.
The second problem is that the gay rights community isn't driving this line of questioning. The advocates I know don't think the next great achievement of equality will be getting a conservative presidential candidate to their wedding. Rather, the media are driving it, for their own reasons. Remember the rape-related comments that sank two Republican candidates for Senate in 2012? The media want more gaffes that they can use to generate controversy and mold it to fit established narratives.
Very well, but the most troubling part of this whole clown show is that it is so blithely hypocritical.
President Obama and the Democrats' presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton, have attended countless events, brokered dozens of deals, and exchanged all sorts of sordid goods with state actors who lock away gay people, behead them and throw them off buildings.
In 2014, Obama held the first ever U.S.-Africa summit, where he welcomed some of the world's most homophobic dictators to the White House, rolling out a literal red carpet and posing for photos with tyrants likeGambia's Yahya Jammeh, who has vowed to "cut off the head" of homosexuals in his country, and Nigeria'sGoodluck Jonathan, who has jailed dozens of homosexuals in his country.
Hillary Clinton has accepted millions in donations from countries like Saudi Arabia, where homosexuality is illegal and punishable by death.
If Clinton can accept money from countries where gay people are stoned to death, and President Obama can open the White House to dictators who promise to cut off their heads, can't Rick Santorum recuse himself from attending a gay wedding?
It's time to get our priorities straight. My advice to the candidates: Don't dignify stupid questions with real answers. It's beneath the office you are seeking.
As long as the gutless “Republicans” let the lefties run the agenda, I guess it might.
Actually, just say yes and throw other issues back at them.
Only for the Low Information Voters.
Who seem to make up about 55% of the electorate these days.
Well, you do need a class of proles so that when true socialism arrives a ready supply of slave labor will be available.
A candidate’s views on homosexuality and abortion are the sole criteria I use for whether I’ll vote for them. If they support those abominations, I won’t support them.
Our nation is already under God’s judgment, with His wrath falling on us, turning our formerly obedient and prosperous nation into a bankrupt nation because of our disobedience. Continuing to poke God with a sharp stick by supporting behaviors He abhors is NOT the way to get back into His good graces. That’s how His wrath will just keep falling on us.
So supporting any candidate that supports depravity isn’t the way out of God’s wrath. In that regard, in the only way that matters, voting for a Repub who supports depravity is no different than voting for a Dimmo who supports depravity. Both will result in continued Divine wrath. A depraved Repub and a depraved Dimmo are indistinguishable.
There’s also the whole conscience thing, that by voting for a candidate, you’re voting for every position that candidate has espoused. Voting for a candidate that supports depravity means that I support depravity too. So I can’t do that.
It’s a secular Humanist religious test.
My reply would be; “well, I’m not in the habit of crashing weddings, but once I got America’s economy back on trac, repealed obamacare, and worked correcting the straightening out obamas foreign policy mess, and it was someone I knew, I might!”
Then I’d ask the reporter, “how many gay weddings has Obama attended as President?”
Is my take on social events what you invited me here to answer, or, don’t you care about the problems we have today?
By the way, that same answer also applies to weddings between a man and woman.
What I want to know is why this gay couple would invite someone who is in favor of banning contraception to their wedding in the first place!
I don’t want mesothelioma so I’m not putting on anything flameproof. But Religious FReepers, yer doin it wrong.
Cruz is the one with the correct answer.
In the Bible / Torah, as far as I know, and I am no expert, murder is the unforgivable sin, and gossip is worse than murder. The rest are just All Bad Sins. The big 10 get some command billing.
You all go to weddings of gossipers. Leave the gay thing out of presidential politics because it’s not a Presidential duty.
It is my belief that many religious people rank sins in hierarchy due to their own personal yuck factor. If you are Christians, remember that Jesus did not. He hung with lepers and whores.
No one will get nominated if they appear by the mainstream to be prejudiced against gays. Period. No one. Gays may be sinning but so is everyone else.
I would attend a gay wedding.
I would also attend a wedding where one of the people involved had been divorced and NOT gotten a “proper’ annulment from their Catholic bishop....
On principle I do not back the concept of gay marriage - and, because I’m not Catholic - I’m not concerned about ‘proper annulments’...
Yes!
If you don’t have the courage to stand up and say “NO!” then you don’t deserve my support.
It is NOT “hate” to decline to participate in a pretend marriage.
By attending a gay wedding do you mean the ceremony or the party afterwards?
The last election hung on free birth control pills, so what the hell?
It did?
You can say that again
There’s a term someone used on a thread a month or two back, “social” something or other I think, that refers to a position on an issue that most people don’t really care about, but which they use to determine whether a person is an a*****e or not.
People don’t like a*****es, and won’t vote for them.
It’s the same reason why the whole global warming denier label is being used, despite voters never placing it near the top of what issues they care about. It’s basically a shortcut to driving voter behavior without having to focus on substantive issues that work against you.
I certainly wouldn’t think much of a candidate who says he doesn’t believe in homo-marriage, but then goes to a homosex wedding or reception. Reminds me of some of those Dem politicians in the Northeast who would always say they were personally against abortion (due to their Catholic faith or whatever), but then constantly support abortion in every vote and political action they took.
One of the prime reasons Romney was the first GOP candidate in my entire voting life to ‘not’ get my vote was due to his facilitation of homo-marriage in his own state. Any candidate wobbly on this issue will receive similar response from me.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.