CBS News reports that Cindy McCain, the wife of 2008 Republican Presidential Nominee Senator John McCain publicly joined the fight for the right for marriage equality. Appearing in a photoshoot by Adam Bouska with tape over her mouth and a “NOH8″ logo on her face, McCain is hoping her position can bring attention to the efforts to overturn California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage.
McCain’s appearance comes as former Bush Adminstration Solicitor General Ted Olson, is in Court challenging Proposition 8, who recently published a column in Newsweek arguing his belief in the fundemental right for gay and lesbian couples to marry. Olson’s arguments were joined by Robert Levy, Chairman of the Cato Institute and conservative Fox News Contibutor Margaret Hoover in speaking out on the conservative case for marriage.
McCain, who approached the campaign offering her support, having been a champion for her daughter Meghan McCain, a vocal advocate for same-sex marriage and the keynote speaker at the 2009 Log Cabin Republican National Convention. In a piece, published by GayPolitics.com, McCain is joined by a number of notable Republican leaders, including Vice President Dick Cheney, McCain-Palin Campaign Manager Scott Schmidt, California Governor Arnold Schwarzeger, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, Massachussets Republican Gubernatorial Candidate Charlie Baker who is running with openly gay Richard Tisei, among many more.
Reuters analyzes one of the central claims made against same-sex marriage, whether gays can raise children:
The quality of the relationship between the child and the parents, the relationship between the parents, and the economic resources available to the family, were the top issues for healthy children,’ [Michael Lamb, head of the Social and Developmental Psychology Department at Cambridge University] said.
Kids had no trouble with their own sexual identity or other development due to growing up with same-sex parents, he argued, and the ways fathers and mothers interacted with kids was not as important as having two parents, he said.
“Children clearly benefit when they have two parents, both of them actively involved,” said Lamb. Asked if mothers and fathers interacted differently with children, he replied, “It is now quite clear that those differences in and of themselves do not significantly affect children’s adjustment,” he said.
Studies reject the conclusion that children are abused more when raised by same-sex couples.
“There is no evidence that gays or lesbians are more likely to sexually abuse children,” he said. “This is one of those fairly old canards.”
Read the rest of the article at Reteurs.com. To learn more about the trial, visit the American Foundation for Equal Rights.
Noted New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, opines on the unique legal team of former Solicitor General Ted Olson and prominent Democratic attorney David Boies, as they tackle the most significant legal challenge to restrictions on same-sex marriage:
In 2000, Olson and Boies sparred with each other in Washington over which candidate would marry the country. Now they have joined forces here to spar with Prop 8 defenders over who can marry.
“Ted Olson and David Boies, so what are they up to?” Olson laughed, summarizing the confusion and conspiracy theories that their union inspired.
As the sun set on the Bay Bridge behind him and the curtain dropped on the first week of the dramatic trial to challenge the constitutionality of the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, Olson reviewed the case: “We’re going to explain why allowing same-sex couples to have that same right that the rest of us have is not going to hurt heterosexual marriages. It has no point at all except some people don’t want to recognize gays and lesbians as normal, as human beings.”
Boies, wearing a flag pin on his lapel, said that the state of California is engaged in “gay bashing.” He spoke intensely about the gay and lesbian plaintiffs, who offered poignant testimony about their loving relationships and about wanting to be liked and accepted: “These people are people you would want your child to grow up and marry. You can be a child molester and get married. You can be a wife beater and get married. You can be a child-support scofflaw and get married. The importance of that emotional relationship is so vital to the pursuit of happiness that even prison felons, who aren’t really procreating, have a right to get married.”
…
I asked the lawyers if they were disappointed that the president who had once raised such hope in the gay community now seemed behind the curve.
“Damned right,” Boies snapped. “I hope my Democratic president will catch up to my conservative Republican co-counsel.”
Read the rest of Dowd’s column in the New York Times. To learn more about Olson and Boies’s case, visit the American Foundation for Equal Rights.
Conservative Fox News Contributor and member of the Advisory Board of the America Foundation For Equal Rights, Margaret Hoover, penned a column for Fox News why she as a Republican is joing the fight to give gay and lesbian couples the right to marry.
I encourage everyone, but especially Republicans, to consider Mr. Olson’s arguments on the merits, both in his opening statement and throughout the trial’s ensuing three weeks. The plaintiff’s counsel seeks to convince Judge Vaughn R. Walker that the Supreme Court has already decided in Loving v. Virginia, Turner v. Safely, and in Lawrence v. Texas among others, that the right to marry is a fundamental right currently denied to an entire class of American citizens. This is unconstitutional.
We Republicans have often found ourselves on the wrong side of civil rights struggles since the 1960s, but there was a reason that Martin Luther King, Jr.’s father is said to have supported Republicans.
Republicans were historically the party ever-expanding freedom to disenfranchised minorities, from newly liberated slaves to giving women the right to vote. Susan B. Anthony was a Republican. By supporting the AFER trial we have an opportunity to establish our historic credibility on civil rights issues once again. But we should support marriage equality because it is the right thing to do.
Read the rest of Hoover’s column at FoxNews.com.
As former United States Solicitor General Ted Olson and prominent Democratic attorney David Boies begin their trial seeking to overturn California’s Proposition 8, Olson has penned a column in Newsweek.
Many of my fellow conservatives have an almost knee-jerk hostility toward gay marriage. This does not make sense, because same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize. Marriage is one of the basic building blocks of our neighborhoods and our nation. At its best, it is a stable bond between two individuals who work to create a loving household and a social and economic partnership. We encourage couples to marry because the commitments they make to one another provide benefits not only to themselves but also to their families and communities. Marriage requires thinking beyond one’s own needs. It transforms two individuals into a union based on shared aspirations, and in doing so establishes a formal investment in the well-being of society. The fact that individuals who happen to be gay want to share in this vital social institution is evidence that conservative ideals enjoy widespread acceptance. Conservatives should celebrate this, rather than lament it.
Legalizing same-sex marriage would also be a recognition of basic American principles, and would represent the culmination of our nation’s commitment to equal rights. It is, some have said, the last major civil-rights milestone yet to be surpassed in our two-century struggle to attain the goals we set for this nation at its formation.
This bedrock American principle of equality is central to the political and legal convictions of Republicans, Democrats, liberals, and conservatives alike. The dream that became America began with the revolutionary concept expressed in the Declaration of Independence in words that are among the most noble and elegant ever written: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Click here to learn more about Olson and Boies’s case and the American Foundation for Equal Rights which is leading the charge to overturn Proposition 8 in the Courts.
