Lobbyists quietly advise GOP on gay marriage shift

The Hill ^ | 7/30/2104 | Megan R. Wilson

[Laissez-faire capitalist]

Republicans on K street are helping members of their party shift their stance on gay rights issues.

Kathryn Lehman, a top GOP lobbyist and partner at Holland and Knight carries a list of 40 to 50 Republican offices in the House and Senate she visits on behalf of Freedom to Marry, a group that backs same-sex marriage.

"The issue is losing its toxicity from a Republican perspective," she said, mentioning that the list was a fraction of that size when she first took on Freedom to Marry as a client in 2011.

Lehman... helped to write the Defense of Marriage Act while working on Capitol Hill...

[Tau Food]

If the body politic as a whole goes looie on marriage it will only serve as a lesson on what you get when you put a matter of this degree of spiritual importance in Caesar’s hands. They might CALL it marriage but it ain’t marriage, any more than the ocean is fresh water.

Yes, you've said that perfectly.

Our real powers are limited.

[Gene Eric]

Save the exceptions, Republicans represent our interests only to the extent of getting elected; otherwise, it’s about their desires, their wants, their greed.

[upchuck]

Since when should a tiny, tiny percentage of our population be allowed to have this much influence on a political party?

Queers: "We are the 2.3%".     07/15/2014 192kb.pdf

[1010RD]

Who pays the piper...

[1010RD]

Spot on.

[Tau Food]

Doesn't it sometimes make you suspect that politicians (and I mean virtually all of them) don't really believe in much of anything at all other than their own careers? I think that they'll say, they'll believe, and/or they'll say they believe anything that helps them succeed. I don't think that they really understand what it means to really believe in anything that is more important than themselves because they cannot believe that there is anything more important than themselves.

That's just the way I view politicians.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Once the brouhaha over this comes to a more or less steady simmer, I think it will become evident to a lot of Christians that they were putting more faith in their government than it ever deserved.

And in the long term, such a shift in viewpoint will be necessary for the rebuilding of America’s soul, if by God’s grace such a thing should come to pass. God has to let idols get truly rotten sometimes, before people will consent to jettison them.

[HiTech RedNeck]

That is the modern state of politics and politicians. Politics CAN be used in service to God, but that has to be a willed choice. It is not inevitable by ANY means.

[upchuck]

The issue is losing its toxicity from a Republican perspective," she said

Yes it is. Drip by drip. But this isn't new. In 1987 (27 years ago), Marshall K. Kirk and Erastes Pill wrote and article titled The Overhauling of Straight America. Here are the first two paragraphs:

The first order of business is desensitization of the American public concerning gays and gay rights. To desensitize the public is to help it view homosexuality with indifference instead of with keen emotion. Ideally, we would have straights register differences in sexual preference the way they register different tastes for ice cream or sports games: she likes strawberry and I like vanilla; he follows baseball and I follow football. No big deal.

At least in the beginning, we are seeking public desensitization and nothing more. We do not need and cannot expect a full "appreciation" or "understanding" of homosexuality from the average American. You can forget about trying to persuade the masses that homosexuality is a good thing. But if only you can get them to think that it is just another thing, with a shrug of their shoulders, then your battle for legal and social rights is virtually won. And to get to shoulder-shrug stage, gays as a class must cease to appear mysterious, alien, loathsome and contrary. A large-scale media campaign will be required in order to change the image of gays in America.

Here's that quote again from Ms. Lehman, ""The issue is losing its toxicity from a Republican perspective."

Drip, drip, drip, drip. God is NOT happy about this.

[upchuck]

Love your new tag line. How about putting some power in there?

Anyone who shift’s their stance so fluidly in the pursuit of support & power isn’t worth supporting.

100 characters exactly.

[82nd Bragger]

Faith in whom/what?

[driftdiver]

I don’t think he really says but God and Jesus are in there somewhere. I don’t look to him for guidance in that area

[CatherineofAragon]

"I haven’t watched Glenn Beck since he left Fox. Does he even sincerely promote Christianity?"

He's a Mormon, so no, he doesn't.

[RginTN]

It will never end with gay “marriage”. Religious freedom is the ultimate target as one sees with the baker punished for not celebrating gay “marriage”.

I suspect this Lobbyist is ok with govt punishing that baker.

[Unam Sanctam]

SSM and abortion are deal breakers for me. I will leave the Republican party over any party endorsements of these things. Call me single issue, I don’t care.

[Unam Sanctam]

Yes, thank you Justice Kennedy for demonizing any supporters of traditional marriage in a legal opinion. I will not forgive him for that.

[Darren McCarty]

Get government out of marriage and leave it with the churches. That there IS traditional marriage.

[Cubs Fan]

They’re going to drop every issue eventually.

Amnesty and borders was the first. Next maybe gay marriage, then maybe abortion etc etc.

[rlmorel]

Ah! From the Elements of Style!

[Salvation]

Genesis 1

English Standard Version (ESV)

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make man^[h] in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

²⁷ So God created man in his own image,
    in the image of God he created him;
    male and female he created them.

²⁸ And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” ²⁹ And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. ³⁰ And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. ³¹ And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day.