It seems to me that the HRC is doing what is strategically the best move in order to help the fight for gay rights (as opposed to simply cheering the people we owe our progress to, which of course would be nice, but also a complete waste of time).
They got a(nother) GOP senator to endorse same sex marriage! Even if Bellows had a chance of winning (which she doesn't), converting a GOP senator to a mild supporter is _much_ more valuable than having a staunch democratic supporter.
It will do us no good to split the senate between 59 staunche gay-rights supporters and 41 staunch gay-rights detractors. That democratic senators support gay rights is already a given, what we need is to convince a handfull of republicans to go from "no way" to "I don't really care, but ok, fine, have your rights". Maybe that means we'll end up with 50 strong supporters, 10 weak supporters and 40 strong detractors. But let's face it, that is all we need.
If the HRC are thinking a bit more long-term, and take as their general strategy to support people who flip over people who were always true to the cause, one could imagine a handfull more GOP congressmen and women deciding to cash in on this, and we'd end up with lots of house/senate races between strong and weak gay rights supporters.
We are on the cups of winning, both popular opinion, in the courts and in congress. But if we want a complete and lasting victory, we cannot do that by wiping out our enemy (there will be republicans on the capitol for many years to come), we have to do it by convincing them to join our cause. That is what the HRC is doing, and we should all applaude their level-headedness!
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momijizukamori
no subject
Date: 2014-07-09 09:57 (UTC)They got a(nother) GOP senator to endorse same sex marriage! Even if Bellows had a chance of winning (which she doesn't), converting a GOP senator to a mild supporter is _much_ more valuable than having a staunch democratic supporter.
It will do us no good to split the senate between 59 staunche gay-rights supporters and 41 staunch gay-rights detractors. That democratic senators support gay rights is already a given, what we need is to convince a handfull of republicans to go from "no way" to "I don't really care, but ok, fine, have your rights". Maybe that means we'll end up with 50 strong supporters, 10 weak supporters and 40 strong detractors. But let's face it, that is all we need.
If the HRC are thinking a bit more long-term, and take as their general strategy to support people who flip over people who were always true to the cause, one could imagine a handfull more GOP congressmen and women deciding to cash in on this, and we'd end up with lots of house/senate races between strong and weak gay rights supporters.
We are on the cups of winning, both popular opinion, in the courts and in congress. But if we want a complete and lasting victory, we cannot do that by wiping out our enemy (there will be republicans on the capitol for many years to come), we have to do it by convincing them to join our cause. That is what the HRC is doing, and we should all applaude their level-headedness!