David Frum: Why I Signed the Republican Brief Supporting Gay Marriage

by David Frum
Feb 27, 2013 12:00 PM EST

Dozens of prominent Republicans, including David Frum, signed a brief in support of gay marriage. Same-sex rights have finally jumped a generational divide, he writes.

More than 70 Republicans have signed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to preserve California's same-sex marriage rights in the case of Hollingsworth v. Perry. Among the signatories: Alex Castellanos, James B. Comey, Stephen Hadley, Jon Huntsman, James Kolbe, Ken Mehlman, Steve Schmidt, William F. Weld, Christine Todd Whitman, Meg Whitman.

With this amicus brief, support in the GOP for same-sex marriage rights has jumped a generational divide. This is no longer an issue only for the under-40 generation. Same-sex marriage rights can now show support everywhere in the party, including its highest officeholders.

Among those who signed it: me. I signed it as a longtime opponent of same-sex marriage, worried by exactly the arguments advanced by the Californians who passed Proposition 8 to stop it: that the spread of same-sex marriage would change the way men and women thought about marriage in ways that would discourage them from forming married families.

Since 2009, we have seen a sharp decline in this country in both marriage and childbearing. But that decline obviously has little or nothing to do with same-sex marriage. It has obviously everything to do with the economic crisis—and the long previous years of persistent decline in the wages and opportunities of Americans, especially young Americans.

As a conservative concerned with stabilizing families to rely less on government aid, I have been convinced: I've been worrying about the wrong thing. Stopping same-sex marriages does nothing to support families battered by economic adversity. Instead, it excludes and punishes people who seek only to live as conservatives would urge them to live. Treating same-sex partnerships differently from husband-wife marriages only serves to divide and antagonize those who ought to be working together.

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