Jon Huntsman to GOP: Marriage Equality Is a Conservative Cause

As we lurch toward the March 1st sequester amid endless finger-pointing (Obama to GOP: “You want to throw poor people under the bus!” GOP to Obama: “You want to throw rich people under the bus!”), that rarest of birds has come out of its nest to offer a glimmer of hope for the future: the well-reasoned conservative.

As a demo gays may be a firmly Democratic lot, but the truth is half the country isn’t, and won’t be, probably ever. If we have any hope of ever breaking out of this awful paralysis that threatens our collective future, red state and blue, it’s going to have be done by somebody—anybody—having the guts to stand up and speak out and say, “This is nuts. The other side has some good points.”

Enter Jon Huntsman, the intelligent, interesting, and provocative former governor of Utah and ambassador to China who, naturally, got clobbered in the GOP primaries for President last year. (Because really, who wants those qualities in a presidential candidate when there’s… Mitt Romney?) In a fantastic essay for The American Conservative online yesterday, he laid out a convincing argument to the party of Reagan about why it should back gay marriage. Yes, gay marriage.

No, it’s no enough. And yes, he may be, for the moment at least, the canary in the coal mine. But we should be thankful that at least someone on the right other than that fabulous Ted Olsen is standing up for the LGBT community when it comes to this issue. It almost makes you weepy to think what might happen if his fellow GOPers actually took the time to listen.

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