Senator's dramatic reversal on gay rights — Page 2

Marraige is between a man and a women, then another woman until she is sick with cancer then another woman. I wonder what the Bible teaches about that?

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^ Beautifully put.

True that.

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Portman ought to be able to recognize that, even if he changed his mind on gay marriage owing to personal experience, the logic stands irrespective of it: Support for gay marriage would be right even if he didn’t have a gay son. There’s little sign that any such reasoning has crossed his mind...

It’s pretty simple. Portman went along with his party’s opposition to gay marriage because it didn’t affect him. He thought about gay rights the way Paul Ryan thinks about health care. And he still obviously thinks about most issues the way Paul Ryan thinks about health care.

That Portman turns out to have a gay son is convenient for the gay-rights cause. But why should any of us come away from his conversion trusting that Portman is thinking on any issue about what’s good for all of us, rather than what’s good for himself and the people he knows?
Rob Portman, Gay Marriage, and Selfishness

That's nice for his son. But I think history shows that the theory of "patience for a little at a time" is something oppressed people comfort themselves with until they realize that centuries may pass before things evolve naturally that way. Eventually the oppressed get fed up with that way of enabling until they finally stop asking people to come over to our side and start demanding they get out of our way. I say demand/take our rights and THEN let our enemies get used to it a little at a time AFTER we have them.

It was that way with blacks and women. Little changed until they stopped asking and started demanding!

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If we're going to dissect everyone who changes their opinion, what's the point?

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"That's nice for his son. But I think history shows that the theory of "patience for a little at a time" is something oppressed people comfort themselves with until they realize that centuries may pass before things evolve naturally that way."

Artscallion, I disagree with you to this extent: the fight for gay rights has achieved a great deal in a very short time and continues to make huge strides. If you asked me even a few years ago if the heads of the Democratic party in office would publicly support gay marriage, I would have been very skeptical. In my lifetime we have climbed much higher than I ever expected. And all civil rights movements have taken time. The fight for gay rights is no exception. Think how many millennia it took for civil rights for women for ethnic and religious minorities to even begin to grow strength. The fight for gay rights is less than a hundred years old and has only been a recognized national movement since the late 1960s, a time when the right for gay people to full equality and to marry was barely on anyone's radar. Now its a recognized right in 12 states and the District of Columbia and public support grows exponentially every year.

Point taken. However, my point remains that history, let alone progress, doesn't happen over night. It never has. The struggle is long and hard. It always has been. One can be salubriously angry about that and at the same time be quite surprised at how far we have come in a relatively short time. The glass that is half empty is also half full.

Still, I live in New York. Although we didn't have a constitutional prohbition, we also didn't have gay marriage until a year and a half ago. I felt the same awe for how fast things were going before then that I do know.

It's always a dialectic. Wisconsin was the first state to have a gay rights ordinance, in the 70s; today, as you said, it has relatively recent anti-equality legislation.

Updated On: 3/17/13 at 11:39 AM

That Rob Portman and the Politics of Narcissism piece reads like so many Conservative articles I've seen about Democrats. Do they think that changing his mind on one issue leads to a global change in their attitudes on all issues? Or that he was to ask permission to change his mind the way Liberals want him to? He changed his mind because THIS issue became personal and hit him close to home. The article goes on about other issues and why he hasn't changed his mind on everything and whatnot and it sounds exactly like a right-wing spin when you mention "gun violence" and they go directly to all forms of violence and other countries and hammers and anything that won't relate to the point at hand.

At any rate, I find it very hard to believe that nobody has ever heard of this phenomenon happening before with respects to having a child come out to their parents. There just seems to be a special degree of cynicism reserved when it happens to certain people, which sounds like a pretty Conservative way of thinking. If we want those opposed to same-sex marriage to gain empathy and change their minds, why are we angry when they gain empathy and change their minds? Because it didn't happen the way we wanted? I really and truly do not understand this. Or perhaps we just want them to stay bigoted so we have a place to direct or anger. Or maybe we're angry that we can't be angry with them any more regarding this issue. What is it? I don't know.

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Was this not the best possible outcome for this scenario? Portman has reversed his stance, despite the party line and opinions of his peers.

He could've done nothing. He could've silently cut off connections from his son. He could've sent him to a "gay cure" program. Any number of terrible things. Instead, the cause has a new ally.

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The difference is that we know that politicians are more than capable of putting party line before decency.

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As I said previously, I don't care what caused him to change his mind, he did. And I think people seem to discount that change is a gradual process-maybe this will lead him to rethink other issues. I don't know, but it could be a start. Maybe he'll just be a voice of reason on a very important civil rights issue. Whatever he does with his new found acceptance of gay people and their rights, I am glad he accepted his son-he could've easily disowned him or tried to 'cure' him as has been pointed out. He could've shoved him under the rug to protect his political image-but he didn't. The response he gave was really the best possible outcome for everyone involved. Let's celebrate that one small victory and hope it ushers in more.