This is an excerpt from a New York Daily News opinion by Margaret Hoover, the great-granddaughter of President Herbert Hoover and author of the forthcoming book “American Individualism: How a New Generation of Conservatives can Save the Republican Party.”
… New York is poised to become the largest state in the nation to endorse the freedom to marry.
Instead of deriding this development, national Republicans should embrace the opportunity to correct a profound inconsistency in their support for individual freedom. Republicans are typically thought of as uniformly socially conservative – and defenders of social conservatism usually say traditional marriage needs defending. …
Conservatives are right to value marriage as the world’s most powerful social institution. The marital bond provides a nongovernmental social safety net, whereby individuals care for one another and anchor civil society in self-sufficiency.
But to deny one class of citizens the freedom to marry based on their sexual orientation is discriminatory – anathema to the great tradition of freedom and equal opportunity upon which the Republican Party was founded. Civil unions are an inadequate substitute. We’ve seen in America that separate is never equal.
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