Sinema Reveals Hypocrisy of GOP on Gay Marriage

Link: Same-sex marriage measure dealt blow.

Rep. Krysten Sinema managed to maneuver an amendment onto the GOP proposed anti-gay marriage referendum that would have granted certain legal rights to domestic partners. The amendment is widely seen as effectively killing the bill because many GOP lawmakers have now withdrawn their support as a result of the amendment.

While it is almost always useful to thwart the legislative agenda of the GOP, Sinema’s amendment also reveals the GOP’s purely instrumental interest in this issue. They are only interested in using the meme of "defending marriage" to bash gays, they are not interested in actually "protecting" marriage (maybe because they know it’s not really under any threat).

Anyone who has an ounce of sense recognizes that that marriage is hardly threatened by gay couples doing it; if anything is under threat by gays marrying, it is the gays’ cultural power as hip outsiders. But this backpedal by so many in the GOP on this bill which "protects" marriage, merely because domestic partners (possibly including gays) got some ancillary rights regarding inheritance and medical decision-making with the Sinema’s amendment, truly reveals the GOP’s political agenda.

They will only accept a bill that will purely and exclusively thump the gays, not one that "protects" marriage at the cost of some compromise on the issue of domestic partnership rights. Sinema’s amendment applies to all domestic partners, potentially including gays, making the bill useless for the GOP’s polemical purpose of mere gay-bashing to energize their Christian Fundamentalist base.

I would also note that I’m proud and pleased that several members of the GOP caucus stood up to the homophobes and bashers in their own party. Reps. Michele Reagan of Scottsdale and Pete Hershberger, Marian McClure and Jennifer Burns  of Tucson all did the right thing by voting to protect the rights of domestic partners. I suspect that, one way or other, their party will try to make them pay for their temerity.