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.