Interesting.

Why I’m Joining the Fight for Marriage Equality

If you are uncomfortable with gay marriage, I encourage you to pay attention to the landmark civil rights trial which began this week in California.

This week a landmark civil rights court case began in California. The federal trial Perry v. Schwarzenegger challenges the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage. Two couples argue that they have a constitutional right to marry, and that California’s law denies them due process and equal protection under the 14th Amendment, relegating them second-class citizens.

You may think, “San Francisco liberals at it again! Hijacking the courts, inventing new constitutional rights!” Stop there. The lead counsel in the case is George W. Bush’s Solicitor General, who successfully argued Bush v. Gore before the Supreme Court in one of his fifty-five performances before the nation’s highest judicial body. He is Theodore “Ted” Olsen, a founder of the Federalist Society, constitutional law expert, and one of the most respected conservatives in America.

Mr. Olsen thinks constitutionally guaranteed rights ought to transcend left vs. right, Democrat vs. Republican divides (he even recruited legal opponent David Boies as co-counsel). I agree with him. And as a proud Republican representing a younger generation of conservatives that cherish individual freedom, I am honored to join the American Equal Right’s Foundation’s Advisory Board.

I encourage everyone, but especially Republicans, to consider Mr. Olsen’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.