The GOP Drops the Fight Against Gay Rights | FrumForum
When Bill Clinton moved to open the military to gays in 1993, the GOP and conservative Democrats led the effort to oppose gay rights. In 1996, Hawaii flirted with gay marriage and the GOP again led the charge against gay equality, culminating in the federal response known as the “Defense of Marriage Act”.
Flash forward fourteen years to the present. Gay marriage is ruled a federal right for the first time and the response from the GOP is… tepid. Not one nationally prominent elected official thought the issue was important enough to get worked up over. The only cries of outrage were from politically active religious groups.
Recently when both the Senate Armed Services Committee and the U.S. House voted to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”, hardly a critical peep was heard regarding the votes of leading GOP figures (with the exception of John McCain who was facing a conservative primary challenger).
Complicating matters for social conservatives, polls show even a majority of Republican voters support abolishing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.