The Other GM Issue

It's hardly surprising that the GOP presidential candidates have strong views on the topic of same-sex marriage. Nor should it surprise us that these views are typically negative. What is amazing, though, is the wild abandon with which the candidates express those views, usually with a profound disregard for logic and reason (not to mention facts).

Had she not withdrawn from the race after a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses, top prize would certainly go Michele Bachmann for proclaiming that gay people could get married as long as they got married to people of a different gender. Among the surviving candidates, Mitt Romney would seem to be the obvious leader based on the sheer volume of positions he's taken in the course of his political career, generally depending on what political group he's trying to woo at any given moment, but I think Gingrich is probably the real winner.

His comments last year describing same-sex marriage as something that "fundamentally goes against everything we know" seem straightforward enough, but the former Speaker of the House saved his "A" game for the end of the year. When asked at a December campaign event in Iowa how he'd engage members of the gay community who want the right to marry, Gingrich told the man that those people should vote for President Obama. On the surface, that sounds fairly sensible until you remember that the President is actually ambivalent about gay-marriage as opposed to civil unions.

I could continue by talking about Rick Santorum's views, but if you're reading this you probably have access to Google, where a quick query will render any such recap superfluous. To what extent any given candidate's comments are expressions of genuine principle or political expediency is hard to say. Whatever the case may be, I can't shake the over-riding feeling that at least some of their opposition to gay-marriage stems from their insecurities about having another half of the population reject them as hateful people that no one would ever want to share their lives with them.