[Vision2020] The Turning Tide

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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February 25, 2013
Republicans Sign Brief in Support of Gay Marriage By SHERYL GAY
STOLBERG<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/sheryl_gay_stolberg/index.html>

WASHINGTON — Dozens of prominent Republicans — including top advisers to
former President George W. Bush, four former governors and two members of
Congress — have signed a legal brief arguing that gay people have a
constitutional right to marry, a position that amounts to a direct
challenge to Speaker John A. Boehner and reflects the civil war in the
party since the November election.

The document will be submitted this week to the Supreme
Court<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/s/supreme_court/index.html?inline=nyt-org>in
support of a suit seeking to strike down Proposition
8<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/c/californias_proposition_8_samesex_marriage/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>,
a California ballot initiative barring same-sex
marriage<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/s/same_sex_marriage/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>,
and all similar bans. The court will hear back-to-back arguments next month
in that case and another pivotal gay rights case that challenges the 1996
federal Defense of Marriage Act.

The Proposition 8 case already has a powerful conservative supporter:
Theodore B. Olson, the former solicitor general under Mr. Bush and one of
the suit’s two lead lawyers. The amicus, or friend-of-the-court, brief is
being filed with Mr. Olson’s blessing. It argues, as he does, that same-sex
marriage promotes family values by allowing children of gay couples to grow
up in two-parent homes, and that it advances conservative values of
“limited government and maximizing individual freedom.”

Legal analysts said the brief had the potential to sway conservative
justices as much for the prominent names attached to it as for its legal
arguments. The list of signers includes a string of Republican officials
and influential thinkers — 75 as of Monday evening — who are not ordinarily
associated with gay rights advocacy, including some who are speaking out
for the first time and others who have changed their previous positions.

Among them are Meg Whitman, who supported Proposition 8 when she ran for
California governor; Representatives Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida and
Richard Hanna of New York; Stephen J. Hadley, a Bush national security
adviser; Carlos Gutierrez, a commerce secretary to Mr. Bush; James B.
Comey, a top Bush Justice Department official; David A. Stockman, President
Ronald Reagan’s first budget director; and Deborah Pryce, a former member
of the House Republican leadership from Ohio who is retired from Congress.

Ms. Pryce said Monday: “Like a lot of the country, my views have evolved on
this from the first day I set foot in Congress. I think it’s just the right
thing, and I think it’s on solid legal footing, too.”

Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the former Utah governor, who favored civil unions but
opposed same-sex marriage during his 2012 presidential bid, also signed.
Last week, Mr. Huntsman announced his new position in an
article<http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/marriage-equality-is-a-conservative-cause485/>titled
“Marriage Equality Is a Conservative Cause,” a sign that the 2016
Republican presidential candidates could be divided on the issue for the
first time.

“The ground on this is obviously changing, but it is changing more rapidly
than people think,” said John Feehery, a Republican strategist and former
House leadership aide who did not sign the brief. “I think that Republicans
in the future are going to be a little bit more careful about focusing on
these issues that tend to divide the party.”

Some high-profile Republicans who support same-sex marriage — including
Laura Bush, the former first lady; Dick Cheney, the former vice president;
and Colin L. Powell, a former secretary of state — were not on the list as
of Monday.

But the presence of so many well-known former officials — including
Christine Todd Whitman, former governor of New Jersey, and William Weld and
Jane Swift, both former governors of Massachusetts — suggests that once
Republicans are out of public life they feel freer to speak out against the
party’s official platform, which calls for amending the Constitution to
define marriage as “the union of one man and one woman.”

By contrast, the brief, shared with The New York Times by its drafters,
cites past Supreme Court rulings dear to conservatives, including the
Citizens United decision lifting restrictions on campaign financing, and a
Washington, D.C., Second Amendment case that overturned a law barring
handgun ownership.

“We are trying to say to the court that we are judicial and political
conservatives, and it is consistent with our values and philosophy for you
to overturn Proposition 8,” said Ken Mehlman, the former chairman of
the Republican
National Committee<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/republican_national_committee/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,
who came out as gay several years ago. He is on the board of the American
Foundation for Equal Rights <http://www.afer.org/>, which brought the
California suit, and has spent months in quiet conversations with fellow
Republicans to gather signatures for the brief.

In making an expansive argument that same-sex marriage bans are
discriminatory, the brief’s signatories are at odds with the House
Republican leadership, which has authorized the expenditure of tax dollars
to defend the 1996 marriage law. The law defines marriage in the eyes of
the federal government as the union of a man and a woman.

Polls show that public attitudes have shifted drastically on same-sex
marriage over the past decade. A majority of Americans now favor same-sex
marriage, up from roughly one third in 2003.

While Republicans lag behind the general population — the latest New York
Times survey found a third of Republicans favor letting gay people marry —
that, too, is changing quickly as more young people reach voting age.
Several recent polls show that about 70 percent of voters under 30 back
same-sex marriage.

“The die is cast on this issue when you look at the percentage of younger
voters who support gay marriage,” said Steve Schmidt, who was a senior
adviser to the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain of
Arizona, and who signed the brief. “As Dick Cheney said years ago, ‘Freedom
means freedom for everybody.’ ”

Still, it is clear that Republican backers of same-sex marriage have yet to
bring the rest of the party around to their views. Mr. Feehery said there
are regional as well as generational divisions, with opposition especially
strong in the South. Speaking of Mr. Boehner, he said, “I doubt very
seriously that he is going to change his position.”

Experts say that amicus briefs generally do not change Supreme Court
justices’ minds. But on Monday some said that the Republican brief, written
by Seth P. Waxman, a former solicitor general in the administration of
President Bill Clinton, and Reginald Brown, who served in the Bush White
House Counsel’s Office, might be an exception.

Tom Goldstein, publisher of Scotusblog <http://www.scotusblog.com/>, a Web
site that analyzes Supreme Court cases, said the amicus filing “has the
potential to break through and make a real difference.”

He added: “The person who is going to decide this case, if it’s going to be
close, is going to be a conservative justice who respects traditional
marriage but nonetheless is sympathetic to the claims that this is just
another form of hatred. If you’re trying to persuade someone like that, you
can’t persuade them from the perspective of gay rights advocacy.”


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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