The Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on same-sex marriage yet, but even most social conservatives now clearly see where things are headed.
Only 31 percent of Republicans favor same-sex marriage, according to the latest Pew Research Center poll, but 73 percent believe it is inevitable. That’s one point higher than Democrats and just a point lower than independents. There is really no statistically significant partisan difference over the inevitability of gay marriage.
Just 22 percent of white evangelicals support same-sex marriage, but 70 percent think it is inevitable. The same is true for the next group most opposed to gay marriage, people aged 65 and over. While only 39 percent of senior citizens actually back same-sex marriage themselves, 69 percent say it is inevitable.
For Republicans and others who still believe in their hearts and minds that marriage is between a man and a woman, the question is how to deal with this new reality going forward. That’s what made Sen. Mike Lee’s, R-Utah, remarks, previously highlighted by the Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard, so interesting.
In a speech to Hillsdale College’s Kirby Center in Washington, D.C., Lee laid it out like few socially conservative Republicans have done. “Like many Americans, I personally do not believe same-sex marriage is a constitutional requirement, or a federal prerogative, or even good policy for that matter,” Lee said. “But today, those of us who hold these views cannot deny that our arguments are no longer winning the public debate.”
Rather than call for civil obedience or ask how many divisions has Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Lee added simply, “Sometimes in a democracy, the other side wins.” But the Tea Party senator continued to stick up for religious liberty.
From Indiana to North Carolina, where legislation just passed allowing government officials with a traditional view of matrimony rooted in faith to refuse marriage licenses to same-sex couples, the perception has been that religious liberty is just a phrase cloaking a desire to discriminate against gays and lesbians.
Where traditionalists once wanted their preferences and values written into laws applicable to all Americans, the argument goes, they are now pleading for tolerance and fighting a rearguard action against homosexuality using religious freedom as their shield.
Lee didn’t rebut this argument directly. But by his tone, it was clear he was exhorting social conservatives to use a very different framing for their religious-liberty arguments.
“Most advocates of marriage equality are no more radical than most advocates of traditional marriage — just as most followers of Jesus are no more radical than most followers of Moses, Muhammed and the Buddha,” Lee observed. “But just as radical fundamentalists exist in every religious sect, so too can they be found at the extremes of otherwise healthy political movements.”
Lee pointed to some of the classic cases of Christian wedding vendors whose businesses have been threatened by their adherence to a definition of marriage that was the unchallenged American consensus for most of their lives.
He also mentioned an exchange between Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito and Solicitor General Donald Verrilli that raised the prospect of religious institutions, including schools, with a traditional view of marriage losing their tax-exempt status. And he took a subtle shot at Democratic politicians like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, who only joined the crusade for gay marriage once it already became inevitable, who now want to punish those who stay faithful to the beliefs they professed to hold while running for president.
Instead of recreating the Moral Majority of old envisioned by Jerry Falwell and later lamented by Paul Weyrich, Lee urged social conservatives to look for guidance from an unlikely source: the movement for same-sex marriage.
“We should never lose sight of the fact that the marriage equality movement is succeeding not by focusing on marriage, but by focusing on equality,” Lee said. “Political conservatives and religious traditionalists may not like how the gay marriage debate is going. But it is no small thing that the gay marriage movement has succeeded in recent years only by adopting our principles – of tolerance, diversity, and equal opportunity.”
The movement to defend religious liberty needs to become defined by those principles rather than perceived as faith-based discrimination. That can only happen by simultaneously proclaiming religious truth as we understand and respecting the freedoms, and perhaps the political advances, of others.
“Soon, it seems likely that America’s public square will fully welcome married, same-sex couples – not as victims or revolutionaries, but simply as equals,” Lee continued. He said differences over the definition of marriage will need to be dealt with in the same way as other sincere moral differences.
“To truly succeed, we must be gracious, and civil, and solicitous. Not only to preserve our own freedom, but the equal freedom, too, of those who disagree with us, those who are – though we may sometimes be tempted to forget – our brothers and sisters and friends, just the same,” Lee concluded.
Many social conservatives are not ready for the kind of compromise Lee is calling for here. Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore and even leading 2016 Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee aren’t ready to give up.
But if we believe gay marriage is inevitable, as so many social conservatives now do, and religious liberty is inviolable, Lee might have provided a good starting point for the discussion.
