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Loading ...RNC Chief: Gay marriage hurts small business
05.18.2009 9:25am EDT
(Savannah, Georgia) Republicans can reach a broader base by recasting gay marriage as an issue that could dent pocketbooks as small businesses spend more on health care and other benefits, GOP Chairman Michael Steele said on the weekend.
Steele said that was just an example of how the party can retool its message to appeal to young voters and minorities without sacrificing core conservative principles. Steele said he used the argument weeks ago while chatting on a flight with a college student who described herself as fiscally conservative but socially liberal on issues like gay marriage.“Now all of a sudden I’ve got someone who wasn’t a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse that I now have financial responsibility for,” Steele told Republicans at the state convention in traditionally conservative Georgia. “So how do I pay for that? Who pays for that? You just cost me money.”
As Steele talked about ways the party could position itself, he also poked fun at his previous pledge to give the GOP a “hip-hop makeover.”
“You don’t have to wear your pants cut down here or the big bling,” he said.
Vermont and Iowa have legalized gay marriage in recent weeks, and a Quinnipiac University poll released in April found that 57 percent of people questioned support civil unions that provide marriage-like rights. Although 55 percent said they opposed gay marriage, the poll indicated a shift toward more acceptance.
The chief of the Republican National Committee has been criticized by some social conservatives in recent weeks after GQ magazine quoted him as saying he opposed 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 committee earlier this year.
Well, I’ve worked for quite a few companies who paid for employee health insurance, but the employee had to pay for the coverage for spouse and/or children. So what is the argument again? How is it going to cost the employer more?
You know, I’ve always suspected that this might be the reason behind political opposition to marriage equality.
Insurance companies, after all, have nothing to gain by allowing hordes of diseased gays access to health benefits (I’m assuming that’s what they think of us – it certainly bears out in their political donations).
It’s almost refreshing to see the truth seep out of the GOP. No, it isn’t god. No, it isn’t traditional family values. It’s greed, plain and simple greed. All of a sudden-like, it’s become TOO EXPENSIVE to let gays marry.
I’d bet dollars to donuts that this was used as a last ditch effort to prohibit inter-racial marriage: diseased inferior races would infect the cost-effective whites with their ailments, thus costing America too much.
Once this canard has been exposed, what’s next? If the GOP isn’t able to use the fear of god, the eventual destruction of the American Way of Life, OR the “it’ll cost Joe the Plumber lots of money” arguments, what will they come up with next? Communism, I’d imagine.
It’s actually a moment of joy: by ditching all previous “moral” arguments in favor of the most selfish, superficial, and easily disproved rationale imaginable, the GOP has shown the weak fundamentals on which their opposition rests.
After all, if we are someday allowed to purchase health care from a non-profit government-sponsored plan, it’s likely the competition will drive costs down. If not, they’re going to keep going up. The number of gays that might marry, as shown in countries and states where this is permitted, the numbers of such couples are not high enough to impact health care costs.
And implicit in the GOP message: these gays are not covered now, and should not be in the future.
Now that’s a lovely argument to make. Craven, greedy, and wrong.
Leave it to the morons in the GOP to put a price tag on constitutional rights. Steele’s position is beyond disgusting. It’s UNAMERICAN!
No, Steele. What it means is the very same pot of money that the business spends on health care has to be divided equally between gays and straights, not just among straights. Oh, but the business would have to raise co-pays or deductibles for straights. Yes, because the business was previously keeping those costs artificially low by arbitrarily depriving an entire class of spouses of health insurance coverage. Gay employees were subsidizing straight co-pays and deductibles by being denied insurance coverage for their spouses. Substitute black or Jewish for gay and see how outrageous Steele’s argument is.
Did I just hear Michael Steele, an African-American, suggest gay slave labor?
Because, basically, he is saying gay marriage hurts small business when it comes to having to pay spousal benefits. But that would also mean it would be cheaper for small businesses to hire gays, rather than heterosexuals, because that means less money needed to spend on benefits for all their employees, where same sex marriage is illegal.
Just when I thought the GOP couldn’t dig their grave any deeper, they happily prove me wrong.
WHATEVER! Is this man really going to go on with this piece of Swiss cheese ?
The major stupidity of Steele’s argument is that his master plan wouldn’t be just limited to gay couples who get married. It would also apply to people in civil unions and domestic partnerships who would be receiving the same rights. So even though there is growing acceptance of equal marriage, there is even more public support for those rights and responsibilities through the other ways as well. Personally, I’m in support of equal marriage, but it just goes to show how much more out of touch the current republican party is with the rest of the country, especially when they seek to diminish the capacity of families to support each other.
when marriage equality would bring tourism and spending from both honeymmooning newly married straight and gay couples and their friends, relatives and guest attending their weddings and other spending spin-offs like wedding related parties and help boost economies, Michael Steele’s words are just sheer nonsense and rubbish, and I plan to find out his contact info and write him a note to tell in so many words just how so.
From helping sluggish state economies to helping more households become happy, stable and productive households by giving same-sex couples over a thousand protections to help them during times of medical/legal distress (I combine the two since unfortunately the medical and the legal systems are currently intertwined in many very hurtful and unequal ways for GLBT people and their loved ones as amny champions of equality have can provide actual examples of suche and I can provide actual examples of just that from what Maryland’s own GLBT community has had to endure as it still can’t marry people of the same-sex even though we now have a few domestic partner type benefits in our state that we didn’t used to have thanks to Governor O’Malley even though he prefers civil unions to marriage while the vast majority of our community now prefer marriage equality having been informed about the failures and inadequacies of New Jersey civil unions)
As imperfect as the Democrat party is that I joined 8 years ago, looking back the many glaring examples of GOP behavior
for the almost 2 past decades that I have followed it, I don’t regret leaving the GOP party one bit given that party’s overall anti -GLBT and anti-enivoronment focus for so long.
Michael Steele’s latest words as reported here, just convinces me all the more that I made so far the right choice for me. There are only 2 political parties of sufficient size and national clout to make a difference and until a better party becomes large and influenial enough to convince me to join,
I will stick with the Dems. I have seen and heard from the GOP for long enough to know that I don’t belong there.
I have waited 55 years to get married to the man of my choice, I am not going to allow Michael Steele or anyone else to rob me of that future choice and future happiness for my life.
What you’re basically saying, Michael Steele, is that marriage, straight or gay, hurts small businesses. Then outlaw all marriages. Don’t pick and choose because that is DISCRIMINATION!
Maybe we should exempt businesses from paying for the health care for spouses of Catholics. OH Wait! That would be discrimination.
How interestingly humorous. Most small businesses value their employees as well as multinational corporations to the point where they not only cover their gay employees but the partners of their gay employees and their children. Because the LGBT employees marriage is not recognized by their state, the employer has to pay for separate insurance policies for the employee’s partner and their children costing far more than if they were married and able to sign up for a family plan. Steele your antics are far beyond asinine and inaccurate. Go crawl back into the retched anus of malice, deceit, and “Santorum” that you came from.
Michael Steele: the gift that keeps on giving!
Why not just void all marriages and save a whole bunch of money for business? This is a new level of lunacy for Michael Steele. He just does not care about the reasons to oppose equal marriage rights, just that gay people are never to be equal no matter what.
I hope the GOP does try to switch to such an argument. It would be ridiculously easy to defeat. It’s a dream position for someone arguing the other side.
I thought Steele was smarter than this.
“Now all of a sudden I’ve got someone who wasn’t a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse that I now have financial responsibility for,” Steele told Republicans at the state convention in traditionally conservative Georgia. “So how do I pay for that? Who pays for that? You just cost me money.”
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Ummm, you mean like when a straight employee gets married and the employer has to cover his or her spouse?? What nonsense.