Cindy McCain apparently supports marriage equality, posing for the group NOH8, which her daughter Meghan McCain has also supported.
Mrs. McCain appears with silver duct tape across her mouth and "NOH8" written on one cheek in a photo posted Wednesday to the Web site of NOH8, a gay rights group opposed to Proposition 8. The ballot measure passed by California voters in 2008 bans same-sex marriage.The McCains' daughter Meghan, who has been outspoken in her support for gay rights, has also endorsed NOH8. She appears with silver duct tape across her mouth and "NOH8" on a cheek in a photo on her Twitter site.Cindy McCain contacted NOH8 and offered to pose for the photo endorsement, the Web site said.
It would have been nice if they'd voiced support for marriage equality before Prop. 8 passed, but I suppose it's a welcome surprise nonetheless. And another Republican, Margaret Hoover, has recently voiced her support for marriage equality in the most unlikely of places, FoxNews.com.
We Republicans have often found ourselves on the wrong side of civil rights struggles since the 1960s, but there was a reason that Martin Luther King, Jr.'s father is said to have supported Republicans.
Republicans were historically the party ever-expanding freedom to disenfranchised minorities, from newly liberated slaves to giving women the right to vote. Susan B. Anthony was a Republican. By supporting the AFER trial we have an opportunity to establish our historic credibility on civil rights issues once again. But we should support marriage equality because it is the right thing to do.
While I'm not sure I buy the Republican Party as the one of ever-expanding freedom, I do like how this points out the inherent contradiction of Republicans, the party that says they want the federal government out of their business, wanting to enshrine gay-marriage bans into federal law. But that's also going to be part of the problem of trying to appeal to conservatives in the Prop. 8 trial under way in San Francisco, which would involve the federal government overturning the constitutional bans on same-sex marriage in 29 states.
Another problem is that Hoover says we should not discriminate against same-sex couples because their sexual orientation is beyond their control, something not generally believed by opponents of gay rights. Maybe that's also the point, to separate those who have a conservative agenda from those whose agenda comes from a misguided notion that their conservative religious beliefs belong in the public sphere.
-- Monica Potts
