Same-sex “marriage” advocates are orchestrating a series of high-profile public events intended to influence the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court to impose same-sex marriage on an unwilling public. The announcements of several Republicans who say they now support gay marriage provide clear evidence of this. The meme is that there is a growing consensus among conservatives that same-sex marriage should be accepted.
You can’t support gay marriage and claim to be a conservative any more than you can be “pro-choice” on abortion and claim to be a conservative. Is Michael Bloomberg or Arnold Schwarzenegger a conservative? Any Republican who supports same-sex marriage is in a similar boat.
Homosexual activists are hoping that these statements by moderate or liberal elites in the GOP will appeal to Republicans who make up a majority on the Court — especially Justice Anthony Kennedy. The fact remains, though, that support for true marriage is rock-solid among Republicans in general, and conservatives in particular.
A survey conducted on Election Day, 2012, for the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) by respected GOP pollster Kellyanne Conway revealed that 60 percent of American voters who actually cast ballots in the last presidential election believe that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. The survey found that Republicans believe in this understanding of marriage by a margin of 86 percent to 10 percent, and those who identify as conservatives are even stronger in support of traditional marriage — by a margin of 87 percent to 9 percent.
Having managed many state marriage campaigns, including a campaign in favor of Proposition 8 in California, I can tell you that there is a far larger percentage of Democrats who support true marriage than there are Republicans who favor gay “marriage.” Exit polls in California revealed that 36 percent of Democrats supported Proposition 8, including 70 percent of African Americans. A large percentage of Democrats supported the marriage amendment in North Carolina last year, helping to propel it to passage with 61 percent overall voter approval. The NOM survey found that 40 percent of Democrats support the traditional definition of marriage.
I am still waiting for the newspaper headline that says, “Large Percentage of Democrats Oppose Gay Marriage.” Somehow, I suspect it will never appear.
— Frank Schubert is the political director of the National Organization for Marriage and was the campaign manager in the successful Proposition 8 campaign in California, along with other marriage campaigns, including North Carolina’s.