The Trunk

Ron Paul, same-sex marriage, and the death penalty

Jeff is right that Obama’s stated positions on same-sex marriage, the death penalty, and so on are at odds with many of his supporters. Similarly, Paul’s stated stance on same-sex marriage is at odds with many of his supporters.

That said, we ought to ask how the Paul administration would compare with the Obama administration on these fronts. The Obama administration has repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, declined to defend DOMA, and signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The record isn’t perfect—but it represents real progress.

Paul, on the other hand, has called Don’t Ask Don’t Tell a decent policy, opposes any sort of hate crimes legislation,¹ and is apparently uncomfortable using a gay friends’ bathroom,

We also need to ask who a particular candidate would nominate as judges, who would serve as attorney general, how an administration would prioritize problems, and so on. If Paul were to (improbably) win the primary, we would have to choose between a Democratic administration and a Republican administration. I suspect that Jeff will agree with me that the Obama administration has been much better on these two issues than a Republican administration would be—even if that Republican administration was influenced by Ron Paul’s brand of compromised libertarianism.

Yes, I understand why Paul opposes hate crimes legislation. If anybody wants to discuss why this legislation is important, we can do that later. ↩

To be fair, Ron Paul publicly rejected his previous support of DADT and voted for the repeal of the policy. He may support DOMA, but he has also come out against any federal efforts to prevent states from permitting gay marriage. On these two issues, Ron Paul’s America would look an awful lot like President Obama’s America. And, if you look beyond those two issues, we wouldn’t have a federal death penalty, or raids of pot clinics where states had legalized it, or warrantless wiretapping, or the Patriot Act, or indefinite detention, or detention without due process, or continual foreign war, or war without Congressional authorization. You may think that hate crimes legislation (that is, laws that make things that are already criminal extra-criminal based upon the identity of the victim) is worth sacrificing all of these things, but I don’t think you should.

Source: kohenari