Black small-government conservative Ward Connerly supports equal rights for gays, and here’s why:

The Arizona Republic via Box Turtle:

Republic: You’ve been a proponent of domestic partnerships for gay couples, which puts you at odds with a core element of the Republican Party. How do you marry the two stances, if you will – anti-affirmative action but in favor of gay rights or domestic partnerships?

Connerly: Very, very easily. I don’t want the government making decisions about people’s personal lives or making decisions about treating people differently on the basis of their identities. So, to me, it’s a natural fit. . . .

The government shouldn’t be making distinctions about people on the basis of what they do in the privacy of their bedrooms. And those within my party that try to inject the government into that, they’re not the conservative, I’m the conservative. I’m saying, keep government small, keep government out of people’s personal lives. If you’re going to give benefits to people who happen to be straight, give the same benefits to people who are gay. That to me was a very easy call.

I took a lot of heat from “strong conservatives” who said that I was eroding the concept of marriage. I’m not “eroding the concept of marriage.” If marriage is that fragile, that giving people who are gay equal benefit (would cause harm), then we’re in big trouble. I believe in the institution of marriage, but I also believe in freedom. I believe in treating people equally. . . .

I grew up in a time when I was forbidden from marrying people who were not of my race. In 1962, when my wife and I got married, in some parts of the country, we would have been breaking the law. It wasn’t until 1967, when the Supreme Court in the Loving (vs. Virginia) case said that that’s unconstitutional. So, I feel very strongly that the government shouldn’t be treating people differently just because they are gay.

(Some of the italics mine.)

I’ve said before that the Republican party is heading for a split. The Theocratic Fundamentalists who want to impose their religious beliefs on the majority aren’t true Conservatives. Oh, they use the word, and they’ll go so far as to argue that THEY are the true Conservatives. But Theocratic Fundamentalists aren’t very good at defining words or reading the Constitution or studying the history of the Conservative movement. Theocratic Fundamentalists are a really bad fit for a political party whose other members are pro-business anti-regulation capitalists. (And in the case of Ward Connerly, anti-affirmative action capitalists, a stance with which I disagree, but which is also a nuanced issue that adults can have grown-up conversations about; he’s not completely wrong when he suggests support for affirmative action based on socio-economic considerations. He’s partially wrong, because racial stigma isn’t dead, but anyway, that’s not what this post is about, so fuck it.)

The truth of the matter is that the Fundamentalists have been little more than political pawns, useful for votes when original programming is activated, and unlikely to notice the fact that their elected officials are laughing behind their backs. That’s changing a bit, lately, so I guess we’ll see. It doesn’t spell success for right-wing interests, of any type, for the forseeable future, that’s for sure.