Republican Staff Choice Shows GOP Isn't Ready to Move Forward on Gay Marriage

By Bonnie Erbe, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

If you were trying to find a staff lawyer in Washington, D.C. who could automatically turn off party moderates and push the GOP further into its social issues cave, you'd have to look long and hard. Not Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-al.) though. He found one in record time after taking over the ranking Republican seat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. From the Legal Times:

The new chief Republican counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote a blog post last month in which he linked same-sex marriage to pedophilia, according to a Web site that has since been taken down.

The post by William Smith responded to a recent speech by Steve Schmidt, a Republican campaign consultant who advised Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign. Speaking in Washington to the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay rights group, Schmidt had urged Republicans to support same-sex marriage.

Race-baiting. Sexism, racism, and gayism (anti-gay prejudice) are the party's father's Chevrolet, not today's hybrid. Steve Schmidt was brave to try to move the party forward on the issue of gay marriage—but not this party. It's simply not ready.

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