Michele Bachmann Giving Up On Gay Marriage Debate?
Michele Bachmann was ambushed with a question on gay marriage, a topic that Bachmann has always had plenty to say about. But now she seems to have given up the fight, saying that it’s not an issue. In fact, she says its “boring.” Michele’s sudden change of heart seems in line with the rest of the young Republican party, which is changing its attitude with a new generation of conservatives.
Michele Bachmann has made it clear during her time in the House of Representatives that she thinks homosexuality is immoral. She regularly equates homosexuality to pedophilia, and once said that gay people wanted to legalize child molestation.
“[The gay community] want[s] to abolish age of consent laws. Which means children… we would do away with statutory rape laws so that adults would be able to freely prey on little children sexually. That’s the deviance that we’re seeing embraced in our culture today.”
To stem the tide of the “deviance,” Michele has regularly fought against gay marriage. On both the federal and state level, she’s endorsed and fought for constitutional amendments to make sure gay marriage would be illegal.
It looks like those days are over.
The Huffington Post reporter Michelangelo Signorile caught representative Bachmann for an interview at the Values Voter Summit, which is a meeting of evangelical conservatives. The question was obviously hurried, Bachmann was trying to get onto her next appointment, but she had just enough time to say gay marriage was “not an issue” and it is in fact “boring.”
Her answer seems reminiscent of a few other prominent Republican voices. Meghan McCain, columnist, author, and daughter of Republican senator John McCain, said in an interview,
“I think that was an issue, yeah. I think it was in the last election and the previous election, but I think, you know, it’s changing now.”
In addition, young Republicans are also warm to the idea of gay marriage. According to Pew Polling, 61 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning voters under the age of 30 are pro-gay marriage. For those Republicans over the age of 50, it’s a different story, with only 27 percent supporting gay marriage.
In the background of that large generational gap, the general public has also changed their stance on gay marriage, with a majority of Americans now in support of pro-gay marriage legislation.
In any case, Michele Bachmann may have just moved on in her political life. In doing so, groups fighting against gay marriage might have lost a high-profile voice in their cost.
[Image Credit: Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons]
