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GOP strategist: Iowa Republicans should come out for gay marriage

In private meetings with GOP elected officials and operatives from across the state, Ken Mehlman, who was chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2005 to 2007 and managed George W. Bush’s re-election campaign, has been urging party leaders to recognize the evolution in thinking and demographic shifts in Iowa and the nation.

“Republicans have an opportunity to both stand up for values that are core to our philosophy — freedom, family values and the golden rule — and to do the right thing politically by allowing adults who love one another to have access to civil marriage,” Mehlman said in an interview with The Des Moines Register. ..

Mehlman, who came out as gay in 2010, doesn’t go as far as saying Republicans will lose future elections if they continue to crusade against same-sex marriage. …

But it’s indisputable that 53 percent of Americans support the freedom to marry for same-sex couples, he said.

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Comment pages: 1 2 3

gwelf on January 29, 2013 at 1:25 PM

ZachV has been advocating for civil marriage on this thread, not church marriage.

cam2 on January 29, 2013 at 2:01 PM

thuja, this reply is just as stupid as your first reply to my question.

Do you support True Marriage Equality, or should I keep you on my list as a bigot today?

Last chance to answer.

blink on January 29, 2013 at 1:36 PM

Calling someone “stupid” for having a differing opinion from your own doesn’t do much for the credibility of your own views when you express them.

Just sayin’.

As for this kick you’ve been on with the repetitive “Do you support true marriage equality?” stuff…You support marriage between a man and woman I assume. Do you support true marriage equality? I mean, how can support marriage between a man and a woman and not be for gay marriage, polygamy, and incestuous unions for examples?

JetBoy on January 29, 2013 at 2:02 PM

Stupid Ken pushing his personal preferences. Ken, why do you suppose that Iowans removed all but one (his turn for re-election hadn’t occurred yet) the justices that rammed gay marriage thru without the consent of the people? So now you want the GOP to try and tlead the people back to the gay river? The party of stupid pandering to every swinging d**k.

The position should be we support arrangements that entitle two consenting adults to whatever rights they wish to bestow upon each other. But we will not allow any action by activists to censure people’s beliefs, speech/teachings or positions due to their faith. If a homosexual doesn’t like a particular church’s teachings, then don’t attend or listen. Just as a “church” has the right to be against blacks marrying whites, or a church that might teach you have to drive a volt. To each their own beliefs in peace. That’s what the 1st Amendment is about.

AH_C on January 29, 2013 at 2:04 PM

ZachV has been advocating for civil marriage on this thread, not church marriage.

cam2 on January 29, 2013 at 2:01 PM

No. He said that religious institutions and religious individuals should not be allowed to practice their religion in the public square.

I wasn’t even talking about marriage when he made his discrimination rant.

gwelf on January 29, 2013 at 2:09 PM

[T]ruth has no value apart from whatever is built, destroyed, sustained or impeded by what passes for true. Truth has no power of its own, no utopian potential, no affinity for the good, and will not make us free.
thuja on January 29, 2013 at 2:00 PM

Bwhahahahaha. A statement implying it’s true ther is no objective truth. A logical absurdity. IF that statement is “true” then it can’t be true and has no “value”. You might want to brush up on the law of non-contradiction and the law of the excluded middle. Start with Aristotle.

tommyboy on January 29, 2013 at 2:16 PM

Bwhahahahaha. A statement implying it’s true ther is no objective truth. A logical absurdity. IF that statement is “true” then it can’t be true and has no “value”. You might want to brush up on the law of non-contradiction and the law of the excluded middle. Start with Aristotle.

tommyboy on January 29, 2013 at 2:16 PM

I know how much the social con kids love to the objective/relative/logical absurdity game, but what I quoted is not on that topic.

By the way, Aristotle would think the social con game is puerile and wrong. There is no contradiction in saying there is no moral truth. In my own philosophy of ethics, the question of objective and relative moral truths is set as aside as meaningless. I do believe in objective moral harm or evil. We seek to minimize evil. Minimizing evil isn’t an objective moral truth. It is the goal of morality, just as tasty food is the goal of cooking.

thuja on January 29, 2013 at 2:31 PM

No. He said that religious institutions and religious individuals should not be allowed to practice their religion in the public square.

I wasn’t even talking about marriage when he made his discrimination rant.

gwelf on January 29, 2013 at 2:09 PM

ROFL! I criticize faith for being irrational (not based on evidence) and it’s suddenly a panic-button throw everything argument you’ve got – even if it has nothing to do with what I’ve said.

I never said anything about the freedom of worship. Catholics have the right ban marriage between non-Catholics and Catholics. There’s nothing stopping them from barring divorce. Their church, their rules.

It’s once they take their prejudice into the public square and try to impose laws upon non-Catholics, or non-Christians in clear violation of the 1st Amendment, now THAT’s a problem.

ZachV on January 29, 2013 at 2:33 PM

JetBoy on January 29, 2013 at 2:02 PM

I think blink is the only one who has found that argument to be clever. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone pro or con respond to it.

ZachV on January 29, 2013 at 2:38 PM

I really loathe the trendy insecure atheist. I lost my religion in high school back when there were real consequences for not joining in with the popular trend. The football players of the FCA loved me. That being said, after getting over my childish need to feel superior I came to embrace most of what Christians created in this country even if I don’t believe their religion.

Unfortunately you have a whole generation of insecure atheist tools like thuja and ZachV who have no inherit personal attributes that allows them to stand out from the crowd so their only recourse is to denigrate another group to feel superior. Just lame trendy fvcks.

ClassicCon on January 29, 2013 at 1:49 PM

Pfft. I was dragged kicking and screaming into non-belief earlier this year. I was not the one to question or challenge held beliefs. I spent 10 years as a non-denominational Evangelical Christian.

It was my sister and my former college roommate that beat the nonsense out of my head by challenging every claim I made. Or quoting Bible verses like 1 Timothy 2:11-12 at me. I started learning things like how Paul never once met Jesus (converted after Jesus’ death) or how the Bible was written decades after the fact by unnamed, unreliable authors. It was all downhill from there.

ZachV on January 29, 2013 at 2:45 PM

I started learning things like how Paul never once met Jesus (converted after Jesus’ death) or how the Bible was written decades after the fact by unnamed, unreliable authors. It was all downhill from there.

You just “found” this out after 10 years as an evangelical? Your sister suceeded in derailing you because you wanted to. With shallow roots, you either fall for lies and misinterpretations or you seek to bury your roots deeper and more firmly. You quoted 1 Tim 2:11-12 which is about women who desire piety. Digging deeper, you will find Paul also lauding Christian women in leadership roles. Contradictory? not at all – more the crawl, walk, run progression in faith. But i get how this out of context is used to protray us as cavemen.

But back to the reason for your falling away, I give you Ephesians 6:10-18.

Bottomline, Paul did meet Jesus, Acts 9. Prior to meeting Him, Paul had a license to kill Acts 9:1-2 (Paul was motivated to do this after witnessing the stoning of Stephen by the members of the Sanhedrin, Acts 6-7).

Converting after Jesus’ death? The majority of Christians are/wer converted after His death. What’s the point here?

As for “unnamed”, “unreliable” authors, how so? The critics weren’t there to provide a counter-account of events.

AH_C on January 29, 2013 at 3:29 PM

AH_C on January 29, 2013 at 3:29 PM

was in response to

Pfft. I was dragged kicking and screaming into non-belief earlier this year. I was not the one to question or challenge held beliefs. I spent 10 years as a non-denominational Evangelical Christian.
ZachV on January 29, 2013 at 2:45 PM

AH_C on January 29, 2013 at 3:31 PM

You just “found” this out after 10 years as an evangelical? Your sister suceeded in derailing you because you wanted to. With shallow roots, you either fall for lies and misinterpretations or you seek to bury your roots deeper and more firmly. You quoted 1 Tim 2:11-12 which is about women who desire piety. Digging deeper, you will find Paul also lauding Christian women in leadership roles. Contradictory? not at all – more the crawl, walk, run progression in faith. But i get how this out of context is used to protray us as cavemen.

But back to the reason for your falling away, I give you Ephesians 6:10-18.

Bottomline, Paul did meet Jesus, Acts 9. Prior to meeting Him, Paul had a license to kill Acts 9:1-2 (Paul was motivated to do this after witnessing the stoning of Stephen by the members of the Sanhedrin, Acts 6-7).

Converting after Jesus’ death? The majority of Christians are/wer converted after His death. What’s the point here?

As for “unnamed”, “unreliable” authors, how so? The critics weren’t there to provide a counter-account of events.

AH_C on January 29, 2013 at 3:29 PM

I believe in being right. I am stubborn, but I know when I am beaten. Learning a fact or truth that cannot be denied, and then “bury[ing] your roots deeper and more firmly” is ignorance. I was forced to face the fact that Biblical values do not reflect current social values, nor do they reflect mine. The Bible outside of Jesus’ teaching (i.e. Paul, Peter, John) is violent, doesn’t respect women, pro-slavery and contradictory.

” Converting after Jesus’ death? ” — his letters are taken as the standard for moral judgement when they contain repulsive moral statements that are ignored by Christian, who pick and choose the goods ones only.

The Gospels are written by numerous authors at multiple times, decades (40+ years) after the death of Christ. EG, Matthew never wrote anything down.

In addition there are writings that provide counter point, but many were burned by the early Church as heresy. Writings that have survived today, like the non-canonical gospels, are attacked by Christians as untrue. Other documents like the ones that describe the half-dozen other Messiah claimants who were waltzing around Judea healing people and resurrecting themselves are flat out ignored.

ZachV on January 29, 2013 at 3:51 PM

It’s once they take their prejudice into the public square and try to impose laws upon non-Catholics, or non-Christians in clear violation of the 1st Amendment, now THAT’s a problem.

ZachV on January 29, 2013 at 2:33 PM

So Catholic adoption services should be allowed to only provide services to straight couples?

A Catholic university shouldn’t be forced to pay for birth control?

A craft store owned by evangelicals shouldn’t be forced to pay for abortifacents?

gwelf on January 29, 2013 at 5:12 PM

ROFL! I criticize faith for being irrational (not based on evidence) and it’s suddenly a panic-button throw everything argument you’ve got – even if it has nothing to do with what I’ve said.

I never said anything about the freedom of worship. Catholics have the right ban marriage between non-Catholics and Catholics. There’s nothing stopping them from barring divorce. Their church, their rules.

It’s once they take their prejudice into the public square and try to impose laws upon non-Catholics, or non-Christians in clear violation of the 1st Amendment, now THAT’s a problem.

ZachV on January 29, 2013 at 2:33 PM

Here’s the context of your comments about discrimination.
It’s standard progressive pap – if you don’t bow to progressive ideology as a prerequisite to being part of the public square then you’re “discriminating”.

I’m surprised that it took this long for the racist comparison appeared.

Do you weep at all for the loss of religious freedom? Or do you agree that Catholic adoption services should be shut down completely?

I wasn’t until the late 90′s or early 2000′s when the gay community generally valued marriage at all. Before then it considered the institution of marriage a bourgeois and outdated artifact that had no meaning or relevance to gay people. Was there ever a time that blacks considered slavery or Jim Crow to be acceptable?

gwelf on January 29, 2013 at 12:33 PM

What, that gives the faithful the right to discriminate? Nope. Sorry. Not in our country. No one has the right to treat an individual with prejudice.

What’s more – the greatest thing about faith is that it is not based in knowable fact, empirical evidence or proof. It actually defined as such in the dictionary and Bible.

And as such, ‘faith’ with no basis in evidence or fact, can summarily be dismissed without evidence or fact. That’s what we call the embrace of reason.

The implications? The faithful not only have no whimsical right to discriminate against any individual, but they BEYOND DOUBT have no right to discriminate on the basis a belief system that defines itself on the absence of evidence, fact or proof.

ZachV on January 29, 2013 at 12:43 PM

gwelf on January 29, 2013 at 5:18 PM

I think blink is the only one who has found that argument to be clever. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone pro or con respond to it.

ZachV on January 29, 2013 at 2:38 PM

The fact you and thuja don’t answer it is very telling.

Typically pro gay marriage advocated hurl all sorts of venom at those that support traditional marriage – we’re bigots full of hate and all the rest of it.

But when pressed on whether you support legalized polygamy you balk because you know that you don’t and are a hateful bigot by your own standards.

gwelf on January 29, 2013 at 5:25 PM

What, that gives the faithful the right to discriminate? Nope. Sorry. Not in our country. No one has the right to treat an individual with prejudice.

What’s more – the greatest thing about faith is that it is not based in knowable fact, empirical evidence or proof. It actually defined as such in the dictionary and Bible.

And as such, ‘faith’ with no basis in evidence or fact, can summarily be dismissed without evidence or fact. That’s what we call the embrace of reason.

The implications? The faithful not only have no whimsical right to discriminate against any individual, but they BEYOND DOUBT have no right to discriminate on the basis a belief system that defines itself on the absence of evidence, fact or proof.

ZachV on January 29, 2013 at 12:43 PM

I don’t think you’ve thought through the implications of what you’re saying. Are you an out-and-out progressive? Unless I’m mistaken you pass yourself off as some sort of libertarian or conservative.

A libertarian or conservative could never type what you did here. You’re saying that the state gets to determine if your beliefs are reasonable or not and if and how you get to participate in the public square. You run an adoption agency and don’t want to adopt children to gay couples? Sorry, the state-sanctioned moral code trumps your own. You want to run a hospital but don’t want to provide abortion services? Sorry, you’re not morally fit to make that decision for yourself. You want to run a church university and don’t want to pay for abortifacients? Sorry, once again the state approved morality trumps your own.

This is liberty – it’s tyranny.

gwelf on January 29, 2013 at 5:29 PM

ZachV on January 29, 2013 at 12:16 PM

Dang, how old are you? It’s been a long time since the South needed your tears.

Cindy Munford on January 29, 2013 at 5:59 PM

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