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Loading ...GOP chief Steele in more hot water over gays, abortion
03.13.2009 7:50am EDT
(Washington) A day after a magazine quoted him as saying abortion was “an individual choice,” GOP Chairman Michael Steele said Thursday he opposes abortion and that Roe v. Wade should be overturned.
A leading conservative called Steele’s remarks in the magazine “cavalier and flippant,” underscoring the new chairman’s precarious position with party regulars concerned about his off-the-cuff style and penchant for miscues.Steele, who was adopted, told GQ magazine that his mother had the option of getting an abortion or giving birth to him.
“The choice issue cuts two ways,” Steele said in the wide-ranging interview published online Wednesday. “You can choose life, or you can choose abortion. You know, my mother chose life.”
Asked whether he thought women had the right to choose abortion, Steele said: “Yeah. I mean, again, I think that’s an individual choice.”
On Thursday morning, Steele attempted to clarify his remarks in a statement.
“I am pro-life, always have been, always will be,” he said. “I tried to present why I am pro-life while recognizing that my mother had a ‘choice’ before deciding to put me up for adoption.”
Both in the interview and in his statement, Steele said he believed Roe v. Wade was “wrongly decided.” He said the Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion should be overturned and the decision left to the states.
In the GQ interview, Steele said he was opposed to gay marriage but wasn’t going to “beat people upside the head about it.”
Steele, a Catholic and former Maryland lieutenant governor, was elected chairman of the National Republican Committee nearly six weeks ago.
Since then, Steele has compared Republicans to alcoholics on a 12-step program and called Rush Limbaugh “incendiary and ugly,” though he has apologized to the conservative radio host. Steele has also promised to give the party a “hip-hop makeover” that would be “off the hook” and would attract even “one-armed midgets.”
Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, said in a written statement that he was disappointed with Steele’s remarks to the magazine on abortion and gay marriage.
“This only serves to reinforce the belief by many social conservatives that one major party is unfriendly while the other gives only lip service to core moral issues,” Perkins said, “which is why many have dropped their affiliation with the GOP.”
The Republican platform asserts the GOP’s opposition to abortion, saying that “the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed.”
In his statement, Steele said he supports the platform. “The Republican Party is and will continue to be the party of life,” he said.
Steele said in the magazine interview that he believed marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman. “I just draw the line at the gay marriage,” he said.
“And I’m not gonna jump up and down and beat people upside the head about it, and tell gays that they’re wrong for wanting to aspire to that, and all of that craziness,” he continued.
Steele said states should address gay marriage.
“Just as a general principle, I don’t like mucking around with the Constitution,” he said.
RJLieger, did you happen to notice the results of the last two elections? Maybe bigotry is the majority view in your corner of the trailer park, but even repub politicians know that your “conservative values”(oppression of women and gays–such a lovely value) is a millstone around the neck of your greatly-diminished party. People with such extreme, ignorant bitter disrespect for others who differ are quickly becoming a minority. While a bit of a majority of older people are still homophobic, the young generation sees you for the bigots that you are, and a booming majority will not be tempted to join a party with such “conservative values,” so keep it up! You are helping the numbers of democrats swell!
Another idiot Republican — but this one can’t even remember his talking points.
Steele’s position on marriage is actually a refreshingly true republican one : marriage is controlled by the states, and the federal government has no business interfering with it.
And to Tony Perkins, I say “good riddance”. Let all those social conservatives leave the GOP and form their own far-right party. We’ll just see how far that party gets.
I’m beginning to think that Steele is Bipolar. He says one thing one day and another the other. It’s absolutely entertaining to watch the man dance on strings that are pulled by Rush Limbaugh.
I do think that it’s a bit entertaining that the religious right feel that they are receiving only “lip service” from the Republican Party. Hell, gay folk have received lip service from the Democrats for years.
Sit back Perkins and enjoy how your folk will continue to follow the Republicans. It’s the same with the gays. A good majority of gay folk continue to follow the Democrats no matter how they fail them on a daily basis.
RJLigier:
“Like most LGBT individuals with paranoid delusions”
Says one of the most obsessed trolls I EVER came by (copying and pasting the same BS “argument”/”statement” over many months). And who is paranoid?
“The demise of the Republican Party will be due to its LGBT constituency undermining its core values through the compromise or destruction of its conservative principles”
What principles are those exactly? Legislating against marriage protections for families and children, or any legal forms of commitment (and not to mention singling out groups and stroking the hatred against them as a wedge issue for your own cause)? Mandating the execution of ones religious beliefs over those of another? Expanding government endlessly to rule over the personal lives of others (and yet complain about economic expansion)? Adding, for the first time in our history, prejudice into the (federal and state) constitution?
Yep, the modern conservative movement in a nutshell. The same prejudiced arrogance of the past, newly rehashed as so-called “principles”.
I am convinced there is something sinister and evil controlling the republican party. Look at how one day someone says one thing and then the next day they say something completely opposite. It’s like someone has put one of those giant seed pods under their bed at night or taken to the mother ship and re-programmed. The next day they are completely different. I think GW and Dick also answered to this higher force.
Google movies like Them, The Body Snatchers and Invaders from Mars.
Like most LGBT individuals with paranoid delusions, most of these commenters miss the mark. No one, least of all a conservative, cares about Mr. Steele’s ethnic background. What we find objectionable, is a Rockefeller Republican parroting the views of the liberal bodies of the APA(s) and ABA without empirical data to support theirs or his opinion. The demise of the Republican Party will be due to its LGBT constituency undermining its core values through the compromise or destruction of its conservative principles.
“…Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, said he was disappointed with Steele’s remarks…“This only serves to reinforce the belief by many social conservatives that one major party is unfriendly while the other gives only lip service to core moral issues,” Perkins said, “which is why many have dropped their affiliation with the GOP.”
Hey Perkins: The Base of your pary is leaving in droves because of PSYCHOS like you, which is why YOUR masters put Steele in charge – to stop the bleeding.
Get it? Probably Not. Perkins is just a whiny little biotch because he controls zilch now.
The sooner the GOP splits into the smaller, politically insignificant Republican and Christian Right parties, the better off we’ll all be.
Any time Steele makes an effort to broaden the scope of his party by speaking what he believes rather than parroting the party line, he is shot down and has to retract. Despite the presence of moderates in the past, Africans and gays are no longer welcome–unless as tokens!
Missy Tony Perkins is having a hissy fit becuase someone is speaking their mind
(sort of) and not being a pull the sting in my back doll for his etched in stone “values”
Tom in Long Beach
This all just confirms the desperation of the republican party. Do you hear that “Log Cabins”?
Who is he John Kerry?
What’s with all this fip flopping?