Politicians May Be Slow To Change... But Republicans Are Absolutely GLACIAL When It Comes To Gay Equality

Long after he was kicked out of the Army for fondling a private's privates, Miss McConnell voted for DOMA-- and still clings to an outward show of virulent homophobia

Boehner wasted over $3,000,000 in non-sequestered tax payer money to enrich some of his lawyer crony pals by defending DOMA. Yesterday, even this conservative Supreme Court sneered at the lame, stale and ineffective arguments Team Boehner made on behalf of bigotry, divisiveness and hatred. From the SCOTUSblog analysis:

If the Supreme Court can find its way through a dense procedural thicket, and confront the constitutionality of the federal law that defined marriage as limited to a man and a woman, that law may be gone, after a seventeen-year existence.  That was the overriding impression after just under two hours of argument Wednesday on the fate of the Defense of Marriage Act.

So how can Boehner recoup his $3 million investment? Well, why not reintroduce a new version of DOMA that takes whatever narrow wishy-washy ruling the Supreme Court winds up making? The GOP controls the majority of the House. There's probably a real appetite for some nice pre-election gay bashing among a big chunk of the GOP caucus.

The last time the Republicans made an anti-gay push-- with a homophobic amendment to the Violence Against Women Act on February 28-- 164 Republicans + nominal Democrats Dan Lipinski (IL) and Mike McIntyre (NC) voted for it. Oh, but it wasn't enough to carry the day. 60 Republicans (not to mention 197 Democrats) seem to have decided homophobia is on the way out. And it was a GOP leadership amendment that was defeated. I guess Boehner can't kick all 60 of those Republican defectors off their committees.

Back on July 12, 1996 when DOMA passed 342-67 it was a very different story. Only 65 Democrats (+ Independent Bernie Sanders, then a House Member) voted NO. [Major Owens (D-NY) and Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) voted "present."] The only Republican to vote against it was Steve Gunderson (R-WI) who had been publicly dragged out of the closet by hysterical homophobic fanatic Bob Dornan (R-CA) two years earlier.

66 Democrats voted against bigotry that day-- but 118 voted with the GOP. How things have changed! Not in GOP-land; they're slow. Republicans who voted against equality in 1996 are almost universally still against equality: Boehner (R-OH), Brownback (R-KS, now governor of Kansas), Burr (R-NC, now a senator), Camp (R-MI, a closet case himself), Chambliss (R-GA, now a senator), Coburn (R-OK, now a senator), Jim Kolbe (R-AZ, who was outed the next month, though just as "gay" rather than as a child molester, which is what he is), McKeon (R-CA, the conduit for so much Mormon money that financed California's Prop 8), Mica (R-FL), Portman (R-OH), Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL, still telling her gay constituents how much she loves them while stabbing them in the back), Steve Stockman (R-TX, back in Congress after working with domestic terrorists who blew up the OK City Federal Building and taking some time off), and Fred Upton (R-MI).

Most of the Democrats who were in the homophobia camp have now seen the light-- for one reason or another. I can't look into his heart but then Blue Dog Adam Schiff was a viciously consistent anti-gay vote who supported DOMA. Last year his district changed drastically and he now represents some of the gayest neighborhoods in America: West Hollywood, Hollywood, Silverlake, Atwater, Los Feliz. Guess what! Schiff abandoned the Blue Dogs, abandoned his career-long homophobia, tries palling around the gays too dumb to spot a phony in his district and-- he's against DOMA! Other Democrats who have changed their minds include Ben Cardin (D-MD, now a senator), Jim Clyburn (D-SC), Dick Durbin (D-IL, now a senator), Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Bob Menendez (D-NJ, now a senator), and the always courageous Chuck Schumer (D-NY, now a senator).

Pelosi led a group of House liberals who voted against it. One of them was Sherrod Brown (D-OH), now a senator, who spoke with Greg Sargent yesterday about the whole idea of political courage, something he showed, while Schumer, for example, didn't. Sargent singles Brown out because "he voted against DOMA in a state where gay marriage was so unpopular that Republicans were able to use it to turn out voters by referendum eight years later, in the 2004 presidential election."

“When I made that vote, it was politically unpopular — today that position is politically popular,” Brown said in an interview today. “The No votes on DOMA were almost all east coast or west coast.” Brown voted against DOMA as a member of Congress representing a heavily industrial, working class, swing district southwest of Cleveland.

“Casting a controversial vote forces us as elected officials to go home and take a public opinion bath,” Brown said, in a reference to Lincoln’s famous formulation. “Advocating for a position, you can move the public.”

Case in point: gun control. A number of red state Democratic Senators are refusing to say whether they will back expanded background checks, even though by any reasonable measure this is not all that tough a vote, given that the proposal is supported by nine in 10 Americans. (In a hint of movement, Senator Hagan has now indicated she is open to the idea.)

Brown declined to comment directly on his colleagues’ skittishness about background checks, or on the sudden rush among them to support marriage equality, now that the country has shifted dramatically on the issue and the Supreme Court looks on the verge of striking DOMA down. But he noted that the episode carries lessons for Dems who are eying difficult votes in swing or red areas.

“People were very critical after the vote-- there was a lot of disagreement and anger about it,” said, Brown, who won reelection by a comfortable margin last year despite running an aggressively populist campaign in the face of tens of millions of dollars in outside cash. “To me, taking a controversial position, if you believe it and you argue it, you can convince enough people that even if they don’t agree with you, they’ll appreciate that you stand for something.”

Take note, red state Dems. It is possible to win arguments over difficult, controversial issues, even when the politics look daunting. And if you try it, you just might find yourselves on the right side of history.