Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Glenn Beck Defends Gay Marriage: Republicans Need To 'Expand Our Own Horizon'
Business Insider ^ | 12/11/2012 | Grace Wyler

Posted on 12/11/2012 9:48:27 AM PST by SeekAndFind

Conservative firebrand Glenn Beck has joined a growing chorus of Republican commentators in defending gay marriage, laying out a strong case for ending government opposition to letting same-sex couples wed.

"Let me take the pro-gay marriage people and the religious people — I believe that there is a connecting dot there that nobody is looking at, and that's the Constitution," Beck said during a recent segment of his online talk show. "The question is not whether gay people should be married or not. The question is why is the government involved in our marriage?"

While Beck's defense of gay marriage may seem surprising, given his far-right political views and audience, it is actually not new. Earlier this year, Beck said that he has the "same opinion on gay marriage as President Barack Obama" and does not see same-sex unions as a "threat to America."

Still, Beck's public renewal of his support for gay marriage comes at a politically significant moment for the GOP, which is working to reshape its message to appeal to a changing electorate. A Gallup survey released last week found that 53 percent of Americans are in favor of legalizing gay marriage, a number that has been steadily growing for the past decade.

Moreover, by couching his support for gay marriage in a libertarian framework, Beck makes the case for the right to look past differences on social issues in order to broaden their coalition to include all limited government conservatives.

"What we need to do, I think, as people who believe in the Constitution, is to start looking for allies who believe in the Constitution and expand our own horizon," Beck said. "We would have the ultimate big tent."

(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...


TOPICS: Constitution/Conservatism; Culture/Society; Front Page News; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: beck; bipolar; defends; expand; gaymarriage; glennbeck; gop; homosexualagenda; homosexuality; horizon; republicans
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 101-120121-140141-160 ... 621-635 next last
To: SwankyC

Yet in the end, you support homosexual marriage, you just want to use another style of arguing for it.


121 posted on 12/11/2012 11:16:21 AM PST by ansel12 (A.Coulter2005(truncated)Romney will never recover from his Court's create of a right to gay marriage)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 111 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind

Wheat and tares being separated at breakneck speed...I’m beginning to believe that a goodly portion of the 90 million eligible voters that sit home are disenfranchised Christians and conservatives...the ‘lukewarm’ are headed right for the gates of hell...


122 posted on 12/11/2012 11:18:01 AM PST by who knows what evil? (G-d saved more animals than people on the ark...www.siameserescue.org.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: ansel12
Definition of Marriage was just fine for thousands of years.

Until you gave the power to define it to government.

123 posted on 12/11/2012 11:19:24 AM PST by Dead Corpse (I will not comply.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 112 | View Replies]

To: Dead Corpse

They don’t need the law, they only need a judge that agrees with them.


124 posted on 12/11/2012 11:20:25 AM PST by chris37 (Heartless.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 110 | View Replies]

To: kgrif_Salinas
The Constitution does leave all questions of health, safety & morals--the Police Powers, in law--to the States.

Certainly, the marriage laws fall under that category. Yet that said, while it can certainly justify one campaigning for Federal Office in ignoring the issues raised by the oxymoron of "same-sex" marriage; it can not justify some one embracing the idea as a way of humoring an irrational agitation.

We do not each have to focus on every contemporary social issue--certainly not. We do need to be rationally consistent in the issues we do embrace. To focus simply on trying to recruit one element in the population at the expense of a credible approach to social & economic reality, plays into the hands of those in Academia & the Media, whose stock-in-trade is to challenge the intellectual consistency of Conservatives. That is one of the principal ways that family values are broken down among College undergraduates.

William Flax

125 posted on 12/11/2012 11:20:29 AM PST by Ohioan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 102 | View Replies]

To: publius911

I do believe Jamie Foxx has already glorified killing whites in his SNL appearance and his new movie. White Christians are already targets for the Federal Government, so what else is new.


126 posted on 12/11/2012 11:23:39 AM PST by OldGoatCPO
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 108 | View Replies]

To: SeekAndFind; All

Beck is a wolf in sheep’s clothing imo. He’s an Obama guard dog like his former employer Fx News is.


127 posted on 12/11/2012 11:23:39 AM PST by Amendment10
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: chris37
It's my religious Faith.

No Court, no Legislature, no President, nor King.

No one tells me how to govern my Soul.

128 posted on 12/11/2012 11:24:23 AM PST by Dead Corpse (I will not comply.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 124 | View Replies]

To: OldGoatCPO

Sorry, I meant to say White, TRUE Christian, Conservative, Veteran.....are targets according to Big Sis.


129 posted on 12/11/2012 11:25:15 AM PST by OldGoatCPO
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 126 | View Replies]

To: stuartcr; OldGoatCPO

You big government types always miss the point in this discussion.

The point has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with gay marriage - it is 100% about why is the government involved in our lives at this level!!!

Solve that and all this BS goes away. That is why the DEMS love to do this stuff... decisive issues that split us.

Get the government out of our lives and let people do what they want, let them be free and let them deal with their own day of reckoning when the Good Lord calls them home.

The reason I labeled you as big govt types is that you believe it is the role of the government to dictate things like this.


130 posted on 12/11/2012 11:25:39 AM PST by surfer (To err is human, to really foul things up takes a Democrat, don't expect the GOP to have the answer!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 3 | View Replies]

To: SwankyC
You write as if the point of my comment was to advocate for the 10,000 state laws and regs that are affected or defined by marriage. Not at all. You have misunderstood me.

My point is that all of these laws and regs do now exist, and Beck would apparently favor extending all its trappings to all comers, regardless of a total lack of public purpose.

Recognition of the conjugal, procreative family has public purpose because it safeguards (however imperfectly) the children who result from its defining sexual alliance. But one doesn't need a gigantic oppressive matrimonial Rube Goldberg machine to recognize marriage. State governments , and before that, colonial governments on this continent recognized marriage 200-300 years ago when taxes were tiny, programs were few, "entitlements" were nonexistent, and goverments controlled almost nothing of citizens' private lives.

Children need marriage because marriage is the only institution which unites children to their natural parents. From this the child derives his identity, his kinship system, and his claim on support and nurture. Lose this, and every child becomes, in effect, a ward of the State: a catastrophic INCREASE in state intrusion.

If Beck would advocate for the elimination of all these 10,000 laws and regs for all, he might have a point.

But --- after we'd gotten back to zero --- at some point down the line, we'd have to reinvent some sort of practical way to reassert the natural parents' obligations toward the offspring they have brought into existence. But that's not what Glenn Beck is asking for. As I understand it.

131 posted on 12/11/2012 11:27:34 AM PST by Mrs. Don-o
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 59 | View Replies]

To: C. Edmund Wright

So you are disagreeing with Beck?


132 posted on 12/11/2012 11:29:41 AM PST by ansel12 (A.Coulter2005(truncated)Romney will never recover from his Court's create of a right to gay marriage)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 119 | View Replies]

To: SwankyC

If, starkly, the choice were to retain civil marriage and abolish religious marriage, or retain religious marriage and abolish civil mariage, I would without hesitation favor the latter.


133 posted on 12/11/2012 11:30:01 AM PST by Mrs. Don-o
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 59 | View Replies]

To: surfer

To support your point, the really stinky Chick Fil-A issue was missed by almost everyone. It was NOT about gay marriage. That’s what the liberals wanted us to think.

What is was really about was the jackboot of government denying building permits to Chick fil-A - because Chick fil-A is considered a political enemy of the liberal governments of Boston and Chicago. It was also an issue of free speech.


134 posted on 12/11/2012 11:31:10 AM PST by C. Edmund Wright ("WTF?: How Karl Rove and the Establishment Lost....Again")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 130 | View Replies]

To: greyfoxx39
No surprise here...Glenn is just following the dictates of his mormon masters.

I've been following Beck for a while, and he's a real piece of work. He's tries to set himself up as a prophet.

Matthew 7:15 -“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves.

135 posted on 12/11/2012 11:32:14 AM PST by dragonblustar (Allah Ain't So Akbar!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 42 | View Replies]

To: Dead Corpse

Dead Corpse, I certainly understand your sentiment, and I agree with it, but we can see the precedent for that changing right now.

This president does not give a damn about anyone’s faith or beliefs, and neither do the courts.

We are about to be facing tyrants if we are not already facing them.

I mean, I tell you what is happening is that X number of people in this country are telling or about to tell the Nazis of Germany that they are not going along vit ze program.

It ain’t going to be pretty.


136 posted on 12/11/2012 11:34:13 AM PST by chris37 (Heartless.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 128 | View Replies]

To: olezip

This is all really an attempt by gay male activists to marginalize women. They hate mommy and mommy must be put in the closet. This is something that straight guys just don’t get about this dangerous group of men. Plus, as someone else has written, it gives them access to children.


137 posted on 12/11/2012 11:35:37 AM PST by miss marmelstein
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 8 | View Replies]

To: ansel12

Nice try to try and set a trap. You are out of your league.

Now: First I am agreeing that you are obsessed with an issue that I am not obsessed with.
Second: I think there is merit to the issue that it should be a state decision.
Third: My state, NC, upheld marriage as between one man and one woman in a state vote several months ago. I voted for traditional marriage, as did everyone in my family who is could vote.
So I think I agree with Glenn that it should be a state issue.
Fifth; I do not agree that we should just get over it, I think we should fight it, on a state level. We won in my state.


138 posted on 12/11/2012 11:37:15 AM PST by C. Edmund Wright ("WTF?: How Karl Rove and the Establishment Lost....Again")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 132 | View Replies]

To: Dead Corpse

When Rome ruled, they defined marriage, when the Catholic church ruled, they defined marriage, in America we got by for 75 years before the feds had to get involved, to stop polygamy.


139 posted on 12/11/2012 11:37:30 AM PST by ansel12 (A.Coulter2005(truncated)Romney will never recover from his Court's create of a right to gay marriage)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 123 | View Replies]

To: ansel12
"If religion defines marriage then there is no definition, because there is no defined religion"

True that, unless the religion (or religions) in question define marriage in a way that's compatible with Natural Law, which is at the root of our Constitution.

An aspect of Natural Law applicable here, would be the children's right to receive from their natural parents their identity, their place in a kinship system, and their claims to nurturance and support until they reach their majority.

140 posted on 12/11/2012 11:37:53 AM PST by Mrs. Don-o
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 61 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 101-120121-140141-160 ... 621-635 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson