Republicans’ Gay-Marriage Hysteria

Olivia Nuzzi

Most Americans approve of same-sex weddings, but the GOP and its 2016 pack desperately fight on, even proposing to amend the Constitution to stymie an expected Supreme Court defeat.

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But if you had been medically frozen in, say, 2003 and thawed out on Saturday at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition Spring Kick-Off event, you would probably be under the impression that a clear victor of this particular culture war has yet to emerge.

At the Point of Grace Church in Waukee, a Des Moines suburb, candidate after candidate (or likely-candidate) pledged support for a constitutional amendment that would overrule the Supreme Court’s decision and allow states to ban same-sex marriage again. (How this would work is not quite obvious.)

Ted Cruz warned the crowd that liberals are trying to enforce “mandatory gay marriage in all 50 states.” He will be praying on Tuesday as the oral arguments take place, he said, and he asked the crowd to join him. Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio, Rick Perry, Mike Huckabee, Scott Walker, and Rick Santorum all made similar pronouncements. (Rand Paul somehow managed to steer clear of the topic altogether.)

But Cruz in particular had reason to succumb to hyperbole. While the senator from Texas has maintained a vehemently anti-marriage equality stance for the duration of his political career—even, as a means of appealing to social conservatives, announcing his presidential bid at Liberty University, an evangelical college that he A. did not attend, and B. is not based in the state he represents—he did, last week, make what was perceived as a misstep.

Cruz was hosted at the New York City apartment of two openly gay hotel magnates. At the gathering, which Cruz insists (and The Daily Beast’s Jay Michaelson reports) was really just about Israel, Cruz said, “If one of my daughters was gay, I would love them just as much.” (The event didn’t just have fallout for Cruz, but for his hosts, who, after facing boycotts, apologized for daring to speak to someone with different beliefs than them.) It would seem Cruz’s performance at the Faith and Freedom event was bombastic enough to make a full recovery. Not that he was alone—if there is one thing anti-gay marriage types sure love, it’s theater.

Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, told the audience that the country is “criminalizing Christianity in this country by telling people who hold to an orthodox worldview of biblical marriage that if you still believe that…you will be guilty of discrimination, which could result in some kind of civil or criminal action against you.”

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/04/27/the-gop-s-gay-marriage-hysteria.html