But the interesting thing about Singer is that he's also backing gay marriage. Singer's son is gay, and was married in Massachusetts. Singer has donated more than $8 million to the cause. From the story:
"I believe a generation from now, gay marriage will be seen as a profoundly traditionalizing act. It will have channeled love into the most powerful social institution on earth: marriage itself," said Singer in a video posted on the gay news blog Towleroad.
He was speaking at a 2010 fundraiser for the American Foundation for Equal Rights. Chad Griffin, a political strategist and board president for the group, says Singer supports gay marriage not in spite of being a Republican, but because he is a Republican.
"He is a real force in the fight for full equality in this country," Griffin says.Singer isn't the only such Republican: it's well known that Dick Cheney supports gay marriage (his daughter is gay), and George W. Bush's campaign manager, Ken Mehlman, came out as gay two years ago. Bush's first Solicitor General, Theodore Olson, successfully led the challenge to California's Prop 8 gay marriage ban.
George Bush won the 2004 election largely on the strength of the anti-gay marriage fervor that was spreading across the country in the wake of court decisions at the time. Yet Bush's campaign manager, his representative at the Supreme Court and his running mate actually thought gay marriage should be allowed on constitutional grounds.
For years the Republican Party has been cynically manipulating popular sentiment against gay marriage for political advantage, knowing in their heart of hearts that it's wrong to deny people equal rights and force one religious group's beliefs on an entire nation. Now many of them are making their true feelings known, since the handwriting is on the wall and opposition to gay marriage is making its last desperate gasp.
Abortion is exactly the same: it's a personal freedom issue, just like gay marriage. The government shouldn't be telling me who I can and can't marry, and it shouldn't be telling my wife what she can do with her own body. It's a total Republican no-brainer: women must be free to use birth control and have abortions, within reasonable limits and with exceptions like those Rick Santorum's wife used. Sometimes the responsible thing for a pregnant woman is to carry the child to term, and sometimes the responsible thing is to get an abortion. Any true Republican knows in the core of his being that it has to be this way.
This Republican strategy is particularly cynical in their recruitment of Catholic voters. Republicans have used gay marriage and abortion to get Catholics to vote Republican, while taking stands that affect far more people and that Catholics have always opposed: the death penalty, the proliferation of guns and callously killing kids on the street, endless wars in foreign countries, harsh treatment of immigrants, degradation of the environment, cutting taxes on the rich while cutting programs for the poor and middle class, and on and on. John Boehner's recent rejection of Catholic bishop's criticism of House budget priorities is proof of this.
Voters of faith have to look beyond hot-button social issues and view the entirety of a party's platform. Their stands on social issues can blow with the wind, completely dependent on the whims of the big-money men or the schemes of political strategists. Because in the end, the rights guaranteed in our Constitution have to trump religious predilections.
Wealthy Republicans like Paul Singer are now openly supporting gay marriage. If he had a daughter who needed birth control or an abortion, you can be sure he would be able to flout whatever laws were in his way, by sending them abroad if necessary, and then spend millions to get those laws changed to ensure his granddaughters would have the same opportunity to exercise their right to control their own destinies.
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