Why the GOP Will Thank Ted Olson
Yesterday, the New York State Senate crushed a bill that would have allowed gay couples to get married by a margin of 38-24. While righties everywhere are probably doing back flips this morning and proclaiming that the people have spoken, the decision is not just morally wrong, it is also unconstitutional and bad for the future of the Republican Party.
As women, blacks, the handicapped, and many others who have been deprived of equal treatment in the past can attest, getting society to recognize the errors of the status quo is a long, hard struggle which continues to this day. But if history shows one thing, it is that these groups will prevail. The question is not if… but when… and how.
In every one of these fights, conservatives have been on the wrong side of history. Our natural instinct to fight against any radical change in the makeup of society can, and has blinded us to real injustices. The positions some of those we call our own have taken on these issues are quite simply indefensible. Today, hardline conservatives are dug in opposing yet another inevitable development: gay people will one day be able to wed in the eyes of the law. Victories like the one earned by conservatives in New York yesterday do little but delay the inevitable and give Democrats more ammunition to use as evidence that the Republican party is an intolerant, ignorant group of belligerent dinosaurs.
Ironically, one of our own might save us before it is too late through the very process that we (and he) so very deplore: “judicial activism.” Ted Olson and David Boies have joined forces to appeal the constitutionality of California’s ban on gay marriage. The two men, who faced off in Bush vs. Gore, are quite possibly the best two constitutional lawyers in the United States, and together they represent a formidable legal force to be reckoned with. If they were to succeed in showing the California ban to be what it is, an unconstitutional law that is, in Olson’s words, “utterly without justification” and that brands gays and lesbians as “second-class and unworthy” in the eyes of the law, Republicans will owe the two a debt of gratitude for saving the party from twenty years of supporting a position that 20 years from now men and women will view as utterly abominable. Not only will they save us from the eyes of history, they will save us from the electoral losses that the public’s general condemnation of the position will turn into at some point.
If you care about electoral victories, cheer for Ted Olson. You will thank him later if he wins.