There has been some discussion lately of the bubbling tension within the Republican Party's base between the fiscal conservatives and the social conservatives. Frankly, this tension has always existed but only tends to surface when the GOP is out of power and the two sides are wrangling for influence, with the fiscal conservatives claiming that the social conservatives' focus on culture war issues is driving away potential Republican voters while the social conservatives claim the the only reason the GOP is even a viable party is because of the loyalty of the Religious Right base.
Grover Norquist undoubtedly comes down on the fiscal conservative side and so it's no surprise to see him sit down with Dan Gilgoff to offer the social conservatives a little "tough love":
(Religious Right) leaders sometimes who announce that they want to make everybody be one religion or make everybody think one way ... Some religious right leaders do that, acting as if everybody of their faith persuasion votes on their command, which is insulting, not true, and ridiculous. They shouldn't talk like that.
...
James Dobson made some comment that 40 percent of the votes for George W. Bush in 2004 came from evangelical Protestants, therefore you owe the presidency to us and you need to do what we want. It's missing why they voted for Bush. They didn't vote for him because they're evangelical Protestants. They voted for Bush because they wanted to be left alone in their faith and family commitments, which are evangelical Protestant. But the orthodox Jews and the Muslims who voted for Bush voted for the same reason, so you can't go to Bush and say, "Govern as a Baptist."
As for the issue of marriage equality, Norquist refused to say whether he supports it, saying simply that he hasn't focused on it and saying that the government shouldn't even be involved in the marriage business anyway:
Churches, synagogues, and mosques should write marriage contracts, and the state should enforce contracts. You shouldn't have sacraments organized, managed, and defined by the states.
Communities of faith ought to be into denationalizing marriage, just as I want to denationalize healthcare and education, rather than trying to get the federal government to run the post office correctly or manage marriage correctly.
Of course, "denationalizing marriage" is exactly what the Religious Right doesn't want because it could lead to states granting marriage rights to same-sex couples, which is why they are insisting on the need for a federal marriage amendment.
http://rightwingwatch.org/content/norquist-religious-right-stop-whining
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