Can LGBT Rights and Conservatives Mix?

Meghan McCain, daughter of Republican Senator and former presidential candidate John McCain, calls herself a “progressive Republican.” In a speech at George Washington University last week, she said the gay rights movement was "this generation's civil rights movement" and restated her support for marriage equality.

At a time when ultra-conservative Republicans and “Teabaggers” are threatening to widen the divide between the left and the right, does McCain represent a new breed of conservative who can help bridge our differences?

Another famous conservative, attorney Ted Olson, has also been in the news in support of marriage equality. Olson, who held high positions in both the G. W. Bush and Reagan administrations, led Bush’s team in the Bush v. Gore case that determined the 2000 presidential election. He then teamed with his opponent in the case, David Boies, to argue against California’s Prop 8 in this year’s Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial.

Far from seeing this as contradictory, Olson wrote a cover story for Newsweek (1/9/2010), “The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage,” in which he asserted, “Same-sex unions promote the values conservatives prize. . . . Marriage . . . transforms two individuals into a union based on shared aspirations, and in doing so establishes a formal investment in the well-being of society. The fact that individuals who happen to be gay want to share in this vital social institution is evidence that conservative ideals enjoy widespread acceptance.”

He has found at least some of like mind. Conservative Fox News commentator Margaret Hoover joined the advisory board for Olson and Boies’ American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), and wrote in a Fox News editorial, “Republicans were historically the party ever-expanding freedom to disenfranchised minorities, from newly liberated slaves to giving women the right to vote. . . By supporting the AFER trial we have an opportunity to establish our historic credibility on civil rights issues once again.”

Are Hoover, McCain, and Olson a new breed of conservative, however, or are they simply holding truer to older conservative ideals? Before an interview with Olson and Boies in January, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow discussed then-conservative writer Andrew Sullivan’s book Virtually Normal. In 1996, when the book came out, she explained, “Gay marriage was seen as a fundamentally conservative idea,” supported by those who wanted gay people to try and become part of existing institutions rather than overturn those institutions.

Since that time, however, marriage equality has moved decisively into the sphere of the left — but as Maddow observed, “Something has happened in the past year that has brought the gay marriage issue back to its conservative roots.”

Perhaps it is the example of conservatives in the U.K., where there are three openly gay Conservative government ministers. David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party, said in early March that if his party gains power, it would extend maternity and paternity leave to same-sex couples in civil partnerships who have children. He also apologized for his party’s support of Section 28, a law in effect between 1988 and 2003 that banned the “promotion of homosexuality” by public authorities.

Journalist Martin Popplewell, who interviewed Cameron recently, later questioned the politician’s commitment to LGBT rights, noting his awkwardness in the interview and lack of Conservative support for a European parliament measure to condemn an anti-LGBT bill in Lithuania. More damningly, Popplewell observed that Cameron opposed changes to U.K. law in 2008 that made it easier for lesbians to receive in vitro fertilization (IVF), and was evasive about future plans regarding the law.

This begs the question: If we are seeing a burgeoning movement of pro-LGBT conservatives in the U.S., will they support marriage equality but be more reluctant to throw their weight behind LGBT-related measures involving reproductive rights, immigration rights, and other areas where left and right are strongly opposed?

McCain told her audience that she was not abandoning core Republican ideals, but rather, "I am saying make room for all of the Republicans, and let's start evolving with the times. We must evolve or we'll die."

Those of us to the left of center in the LGBT rights movement must likewise ask ourselves if we have room for those to the right, and if such bipartisanship is necessary to our survival. Can we, like Olson and Boies, learn to work together in some areas and disagree in others?

That would certainly point to a brighter future than the widening left-right divide that dominates current politics. Whether we get there remains an open question.

Photo credit: Jumping Cheese, Wikimedia Commons