To call their stubborn refusal to listen to the public “tone deaf” is an understatement.
On Tuesday, three vocal opponents of marriage equality visited Michigan — a state where a recent poll shows strong support for legalizing same-sex marriage.
New state-based polling data from the Public Religion Research Institute shows that Michigan voters favor marriage equality by an overwhelming margin: 56 percent to 37 percent. You can read more about the poll HERE.
But don’t tell Rand Paul, Ben Carson or Scott Walker. Well, you can try, but they’d probably just put their fingers in their ears and hum loudly to avoid hearing the truth: Public support is on the side of marriage equality.
Even Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette refuses to hear the truth, continuing his crusade to uphold Michigan’s same-sex marriage ban by claiming the public voted for it — even though public opinion has shifted dramatically since the ban was enacted by voters in 2004, as shown by the recent poll.
As for Carson and Walker, they both think marriage equality should be left up to the states. In fact, Walker favors a constitutional amendment that would put the power to decide about marriage equality in the hands of the states.
Paul supports a constitutional amendment, too, although he’d ban same-sex marriage altogether. At the West Side Conservative Club in Urbandale, Iowa, last August, he offered this incoherent explanation for his support of a constitutional amendment defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman:
I’m in favor of the concept. I am in favor of traditional marriage, and I think that’s been the foundation for civilization for thousands of years. And the loss of the idea of marriage is probably the leading cause of poverty in our country, in the sense that if you [have] kids before you’re married, your chance of being in poverty is three of four times that of anyone else.
Which brings us back to the same ridiculous argument promoted by AG Schuette, that marriage is strictly about procreation. So if you get married but don’t have kids — or you remain single for whatever reason — you’re going to wind up in poverty? Yeah, it makes no sense to me, either.
Of course, this wouldn’t be the first time any of these men made ludicrous statements. But it’s just one more example of how out of touch with reality — and the voting public — they all are.
[Image credit: Anne Savage Photography.]
