How to Get Your Conservative Dad to Love Gay Marriage

Looking for a role model when it comes to getting your conservative father -- or any conservative family member -- on board the marriage equality bandwagon? Look to San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders (not pictured!), a Republican who went from harshing on gay marriage to fully embracing the idea of equal marriage rights for gay and lesbian couples.

What was the tipping point? Seeing his daughter, a lesbian in a relationship with another woman, face the brunt of discrimination that comes with laws that ban same-sex marriage.

Sanders was one of the stars today in the Perry v. Schwarzenegger case, the federal court case in California being led by Attorneys David Boies and Ted Olson, challenging the constitutionality of California's ban on gay marriage (otherwise known as Proposition 8). Sanders, for his part, gave the judge his story on how his position on marriage equality evolved over time. Sanders used to think that civil unions were good enough for gay and lesbian couples. But once his daughter came out, he saw that separate institutions don't make for friends of equality.

"If the government tolerates discrimination against anyone for any reason, it becomes an excuse for the public to do exactly the same thing," Sanders said from the stand. By not supporting full and equal marriage rights, Sanders added, "I was discriminating against even my own daughter."

What (good) parent wants to do that?

While Sanders might be ahead of his time when it comes to Republicans embracing same-sex marriage, he's certainly on the right end of history and on the rising trend of a tipping point. More conservative support gay marriage now than ever before. Why? Well, for a few reasons.

In Sanders case, it's the exposure he got to inequality after his daughter came out. Though it took time, he eventually saw that the legal system not only discriminated against his daughter, but it fostered a culture where the public could view loving gay and lesbian relationships as aberrant.

For Ted Olson, the Republican lawyer arguing for gay marriage advocates, supporting marriage equality wasn't necessarily because of a familial connection, but because of how he viewed the issue of marriage. Writing for Newsweek as Perry v. Schwarzenegger got off the ground, Olson argued that conservatives should embrace gay marriage, since marriage as an institution provides stability, creates community, and encourages others to place the interest of someone else before their own.

Sanders and Olson come at it from two different perspectives, so to speak, but both make cogent arguments for why conservatives should get behind gay marriage. Their task is partly to convince Judge Vaughn Walker that they're right -- but on a much larger level, their task is also to convince the conservative fathers and mothers and brothers and uncles and aunts and grandmothers out there, that being on the right side of the political spectrum is not inconsistent with supporting LGBT children, and the relationships these children enter into.

We'll see how well they do. I'm scheduled to speak to my George W. Bush voting, Charlie Crist-loving Florida Republican father tonight.

Photo credit: One from RM