"I don’t worry about [how my support for civil unions will hurt me in the GOP primary] at all, because I am who I am. I have certain beliefs and I don’t hide from those. … It is what it is, and I’m not going to change it. I believe in traditional marriage but I think, subordinate to that, we’ve done an inadequate job in the area of equality and reciprocal beneficiary rights. Some people will hold that against me, like maybe other issues. But I think some people will say, ‘That sounds right to me. That sounds fair,'" – Jon Huntsman.
This, by the way, was always one of my fears: that in the battle for marriage equality, some moderate Republican or conservative Democrat with clout would simply say – give them civil unions. If he or she had done that, the marriage movement might have been stopped dead. Instead, the GOP was so hostile to gay relationships – for fundamentalist reasons – that they had to ban any kind of legal protection and the Dems were so pathetic and cowardly they wouldn't back civil unions until marriage equality had gotten momentum. Huntsman was the pragmatic moderate that could have defused the issue – but also consigned gay people to second-class status, for a while at least.
But to Huntsman's credit, he is the only Republican able to talk about gay people as if we weren't inherently suspect, suspiciously immoral and a vague threat to society. He is not in thrall to fundamentalist panic. Which is why he gives me hope for a saner, calmer, more realistic conservatism, and why this time, I'm afraid, his prospects are rather grim.
It will get worse before it gets better.
The Dish 