So he's "evolving" too, now?

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

Glenn Beck Defends Gay Marriage: Republicans Need To 'Expand Our Own Horizon'
http://www.businessinsider.com/glenn-beck-defends-gay-marriage-video-2012-12#ixzz2Em5wKk7K

"Conservative firebrand Glenn Beck has joined a growing chorus of Republican commentators in defending gay marriage, laying out a strong case for ending government opposition to letting same-sex couples wed."
...
""Let me take the pro-gay marriage people and the religious people - I believe that there is a connecting dot there that nobody is looking at, and that's the Constitution," Beck said during a recent segment of his online talk show. "The question is not whether gay people should be married or not. The question is why is the government involved in our marriage?""
...
""What we need to do, I think, as people who believe in the Constitution, is to start looking for allies who believe in the Constitution and expand our own horizon," Beck said. "We would have the ultimate big tent.""

Amazing, right? Mr Beck has started coming around to positions traditionally held by authentic libertarians for a long time - and not for the "gay rights" reason mind you, but for a constitutional reason. A moment of sanity/consistency/sincerity perhaps? Or simply a realization that you can't win hearts and minds (and elections) by remaining stuck in a 19th century mindset (and respectively, acknowledging the need to pander to wider segments of the electorate)? But shut up, cynical me! I'm sure he's speaking out of pure principle, being the true libertarian that he is. Yes, it must be that!

Somehow reminds me of Hannity and Rand Paul and all the rest of that circus who suddenly gradually "evolved" on immigration in the aftermath of the election. Because, you see, the GOP has no problem with the dynamically shifting demographics in America, noooo. No way it can have that problem. The election defeat was simply a result from bad campaign management, and failure to bring the messages to the public. Right? That's what I'm being told. What... why are you shaking your head? Oh well...

But it's not like Glenn hasn't displayed some consistency on this issue. Remember an interview at O'Reilly's place a couple of years ago, when Glenn revealed himself as the socialist commie Marxist Alinsky-ite that he is, saying that "gay marriage doesn't harm anything"?

Don't know if that was a genuine moment of sanity from Glenn, but O'Reilly must've looked at him in dismay and blinked a couple of times with bewilderment. How come such a staunch conservative mouthpiece had suddenly budged on this issue? Wasn't Jesus supposed to be hatin' on f**s anyway? YOU CAN'T EXPLAIN THAT!

It was nearly fascinating to watch how, referring to gay marriage, Beck quoted Jefferson's famous phrase "It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg". Well, HELLO! Took you a while to realize that, eh? Better late than never.

But the backlash has been even more hilarious.

Citation from the latter link:

"There you have it. Beck doesn't care about one of the most blatant and despicable examples of judicial tyranny in the history of our country. He doesn't care about the institution of marriage and its 5,000-year history. He doesn't care that the Bible says God created marriage way back in Genesis and that Jesus affirmed that. He doesn't care that the family is the building block of a society and that smarter men have explained how you simply can't have freedom and self-governance without it. He also doesn't seem to care about what might become of children adopted into such unions."

Well, good thing he doesn't have to care. Cuz all those arguments are either irrelevant (laws aren't based on the Bible, and neither should they be), or outright idiotic (yeah, "gay marriage will destroy Teh Family, OMGZ! Cats sleeping with dogs, and all that!").

Either way, Beck has shown such a tremendous (for a conservative, anyway) ability to evolve on issues, he'd make Darwin proud. Like his worship of MLK, Mandela, F Douglass and Lincoln. At this evolution rate, he might actually run as the Democratic presidential nominee in 4 years! ;-)

Comments

[a-new-machine.livejournal.com]

The question is why is the government involved in our marriage?

That's right up there with Craig Nelson's "I was on welfare! Nobody ever gave me nothin'!" The government is involved in your marriage because marriage is a legal institution you fuckwit.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

You mean a pension rights, healthcare, and inheritance sort of legal institution that gay folk have been going on about for years? Surely not.

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Marriage as a legal institution is nothing more than a variant of contract law and has no bearing on the spiritual and religious aspects of marriage. It would be better to just rename what the law does in that capacity to more accurately reflect what the real function it performs, is.

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

I read his statement as the groundwork for a States Rights argument about whether or not gay marriage should be recognized across state lines...

I see it not as understanding but as damage control on his part

[harry-beast.livejournal.com]

Your position seems like a variation of "that's the way the world is", an argument often brought up as an excuse to ignore problems and delay progress without providing any evidence in favour of the status quo. If you favour the traditional definition of marriage, good for you, but as society evolves, there is no reason that legal institutions can't evolve as well.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

While I agree that if government is going to be involved in marriage it's biased to say you can't be married to this person but you can be married to this other person.

I don't think we need to give special privileges to married people though. The whole idea was to give incentives to what we considered the 'ideal family unit' but does that necessarily apply? And do financial incentives make it so?

There are a few legal things you can't really do away with. Visitation rights, inheritance of property, etc. But why do people need to be married to have that, why not just consent? You can have your cake and eat it too. People can get married and as part of getting married, give legal consent to the various governmental capita fusions and fusions that occur.

Marriage isn't necessarily strictly a religious institution, but it is definitely a cultural one, and varies a lot among a lot of cultures.

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

Don't know how genuinely libertarian Beck was/is/had been, but he surely did try to dance by the Tea Party tune for a while (as long as it suited him), especially as the movement was being born and still looked like something resembling grassroots, i.e. in the waning times of the Bushonian administration when being pissed with W was pretty much mainstream. Not sure how genuine that was, though. He couldn't even dare to support a paleoconservative like Ron Paul.



Yeah, libertarianism being conservatism with a human face - my ass.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

Well in any case, ultimately transforming himself into a Democrat would be a step up the evolutionary ladder, so there's nothing to worry about!

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

What, there are people who are still listening to Glenn Beck?

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

1 million+ monthly listeners.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Stop the presses! Glenn Beck has seen... A DOT! :-O

[peamasii.livejournal.com]

I'm not all that surprised, that he would show some rational traits on occasion.

[kylinrouge.livejournal.com]

How is this evolution? He's just gone from one Holy Book to another.

[chron-job.livejournal.com]

Glenn Beck is essentially a fictional character to me, so trying to analyze what is 'in his heart' is just a metaphor / projection of my theories about conservatives in general.

That being said, a significant minority really and truly don't really care about social concerns that do not impinge on their lives... but conservative politics are authority driven, and message discipline is more important than among their opposite numbers on the left. They are in a coalition with social conservatives, so they all have to toe the Social Conservative line, to some extent.

Open questioning of the Anti Gay Marriage plank = beneath the surface wrangling over the preeminence of the Religious right faction of the coalition, just as open questioning of immigration reform plank = beneath the surface wrangling over the preeminence of the nativist faction within the coalition.

It's more about where the power nodes in the coalition are, than about what is in any pundit's heart.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Heh... pretty much ^

Though I would imagine a similar kind of struggle occurs on the left between the enviromentalists, the humanists, and the neo-marxists.

[american-geist.livejournal.com]

The conservative movement will need to find a new scapegoat to con their fleet of easy-marks. Who will it be? Muslims would be my guess, but who knows what these crazy kids will come up with.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

Well they are an easy (and possibly valid) target.

[malasadas.livejournal.com]

Glenn Beck's career has involved more frantic changes of tune than a performance of Handel's Messiah sung by the National Tourrettes Association.

His accountant must have shown him something unpleasant.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

DQ material!

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Kept hearing endlessly how conservatives needed to evolve on certain issues (they do), but apparently the only reason behind urging them to do so was to mock them as they did.

Damned if you do...

Not a follower of Beck, but I have said basically the same thing about gay marriage that he did for quite awhile now. Not that it earns any favor with those whom I still disagree with on the economic left who may yet find agreement with me on a variety of social issues.

It's one of those things that leads me to conclude that rah-rah team politics isn't better personified by one political label or another.

[fizzyland.livejournal.com]

A genuine sea change would be welcome. Beck's history however, is akin to Romney's in that both have a well-established record of convenient position switches.

The Mormon Church finally decided that things like funding Prop. 8 in California and in general, hating on gays, was no longer acceptable and Beck is just following their lead.

[oportet.livejournal.com]

I'll give him his due - he has moved up from broken record to broken clock. Then again, maybe he's just a broken clock radio now - I guess it's time our idioms evolved as well. I forgot where I was going with that, I bet it was somewhere nice though.

[texasskier.livejournal.com]

Leviticus 20:13- “If a man lies with another man he should be stoned."

What will be a ground for GOP, if not Christians? Gays? They are already occupied.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

It says nothing about a women lying with another woman. Yay!

[anfalicious.livejournal.com]

Glenn Beck does what makes Glenn Beck the most money. I'm pretty sure he doesn't actually believe anything he says.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

That is a perfectly consistent ideology when you think about it/

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I find it extremely disturbing that people in a civilized society think we should base our concepts not even on religious law, like Sharia or Canon law, but on the particular distortions of a religious text that's thousands of years old. At least both Sharia and Canon Law are actual legal *systems*. Even the Islamic Republic is more sophisticated than to try to govern a modern state based purely on an old religious text. If idiots like this can make Ali motherfucking Khameini a progressive on anything, they're doing it very wrong indeed.

[devil-ad-vocate.livejournal.com]

Beck makes comments to bolster his belief that someone gives a shit what he thinks.

[mahnmut.livejournal.com]

Apparently, it does generate some e-traffic.

[squidb0i.livejournal.com]

"The question is why is the government involved in our marriage?"

Because marriage is a merging of rights and property, and some entity has to record the contract and arbitrate should it be breached, which happens quite often.
That entity has to be impartial and secular.

Duh.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

That the entity must be impartial goes without saying.

I just don't see why it has to be the government or even secular so long as both parties agree to abide by it's judgement.

[brother-dour.livejournal.com]

Hank Williams, Jr wrote a song about what happened to the GOP last month, and their behavior since then:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvEWYQGaFIc

[zebra24.livejournal.com]

He is the closest to consistency in non-libertatrian camp I know.
There is no government business in marriage anyway.

Taxes and various legal Implications unless they unregulated and/or dismantled tells us that to be fair we should treat them same as a people involved in traditional marriage.

However this is the way which lead us to deadend.
Better option is to annihilate all law and regulations that forces people to register their marriage in government institution:
inheritance taxes, income taxes and so on.

[zebra24.livejournal.com]

*Wasn't Jesus supposed to be hatin' on f**s anyway?*
Kinda "Jesus is love", why he is supposed to hate people? However he can hate their sins.

*It was nearly fascinating to watch how, referring to gay marriage, Beck quoted Jefferson's famous phrase "It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg". Well, HELLO! Took you a while to realize that, eh? Better late than never.*
Currently this is not exactly true: gay marriage IS affecting taxation, so it is indirectly picks my pocket.
However traditional marriage equally picks my pocket.

[luzribeiro.livejournal.com]

why he is supposed to hate people?

Don't know, these guys seem to think he does.



Currently this is not exactly true

You'll have to tell this to Mr Jefferson. He seems to be cited pretty often by Constitution fans.

However traditional marriage equally picks my pocket.

Not nearly equal, since traditional marriages are thousands of times more frequent than gay marriages would ever be.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

I never know where Beck really stands to be honest.

If you ask me, and I don't know why people say that because I'm sure nobody asked me, I think he has taken Fox News on a little ride when it he was on it.