海角大神

The recent political firestorm over Indiana鈥檚 Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the extent to which the national backlash against it has forced Hoosier State Republicans to revise the law to address the arguments that it promotes discrimination is only the latest skirmish in a battle that has been going on in the United States for more than 15 years. Beginning in 1993 in Hawaii, and continuing through what now clearly seems to be the high-water mark of the 鈥渢raditional marriage鈥� movement in 2004, when a number of states began enacting laws or constitutional amendments barring same-sex marriage, the nation has been in the midst of what can only be called one of most significant political and cultural transformations in quite some time. From a time in the late 1990s when more than three-quarters of Americans opposed same-sex marriage, we are now at a point where聽a majority of Americans support same-sex marriage聽and where only a handful of demographic groups, older Americans and Republicans, contain a majority that says it opposes it.

The change has even been apparent inside the Republican Party. Notwithstanding the fact that, statistically, Republicans are less likely to support marriage equality than almost any other demographic group,聽the numbers have been changing there, just as they鈥檝e been changing in other parts of society.聽 Several Republican members of the US Senate have publicly endorsed same-sex marriage. When the Supreme Court rejected appeals of the rulings against their state鈥檚 same-sex marriage bans, Republican governors in聽Indiana,聽Wisconsin, and聽Utah聽called for public acceptance of the outcome rather than joining in the condemnation that was coming from some parts of the Republican coalition. And, just recently, more than聽300 Republican politicians, pundits, and leaders signed off on an amicus brief聽calling on the court to strike down the remaining state law bans on same-sex marriage.

Now,聽National Journal鈥檚聽Alex Roarty notes that聽one group of Republicans is gearing up for fight on the issue of marriage as we get closer to 2016:

Noah Rothman聽at Hot Air seems to see the logic behind this argument:

The interesting thing to watch, of course, will be how Republican politicians, and particularly the candidates for president, react if, as pretty much everyone seems to expect at this point, the Supreme Court issues a ruling in June striking down bans against same-sex marriage in the remaining 15 or so states where it has not been legalized. At that point, the party will be left with two choices. It can accept the Supreme Court鈥檚 ruling on this issue and recognize that a cultural debate that has been going on for the better part of two decades has, for the most part, come to an end. Or, it can 聽double down on the social conservative position on this issue, denounce the Supreme Court鈥檚 opinion as 鈥渏udicial activism,鈥� and advocate the adoption of a constitutional amendment that would define marriage as only being between a man and a woman. One path offers Republicans a path out of the cultural and political dead end that this issue has placed them in, although it鈥檚 likely to disappoint social conservatives who are unwilling to give in to reality. The other path sends the GOP down a path that is likely to alienate precisely those voters that it needs to attract if it is going to have any hope at all of winning the presidential election in 2016 and holding on to Senate seats in states like Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida.

As Roarty notes, though, those inside the GOP who are trying to push the GOP in a more libertarian direction on marriage are running up against the reality of internal GOP politics. Last year, I聽speculated聽that it might actually be possible for the Republican Party to nominate a candidate who supported marriage equality in 2016, but as things stand now that possibility seems to be even more remote than it was a year ago. Rather than causing the GOP to tone down the rhetoric on marriage, I now suspect that a Supreme Court ruling striking down bans on same-sex marriage nationwide will only serve to energize the social conservative wing of the party and that even something as innocuous as changing the party platform on this issue will end up becoming impossible. I鈥檓 willing to be proven wrong, but the evidence against moderation inside the GOP on this issue, not withstanding the admirable and well-meaning efforts of the reformers, is really rather obvious. How that will impact the GOP鈥檚 fortunes in the 2016 elections if I turn out to be right about this remains to be seen.

Doug Mataconis appears on the Outside the Beltway blog at http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/.