GOP Chair Priebus Reassures Republicans They Don’t Need To Support ‘Tolerance’

GOP Chairman Reince Priebus reassured his base that they don’t need to support “tolerance,” adding that he doesn’t even really care for the word. Priebus also reaffirmed his party’s opposition to same-sex marriage and LGBT civil rights, a woman’s right to choose, and any deviation from the party platform within his increasingly-shrinking Republican Party. 

In an interview with Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody, Priebus responded quickly to a question about “tolerance” and same-sex marriage, saying:

“First of all, I don’t know if I’ve used the word tolerance. I don’t really care for that word myself.”

But Priebus, who was really speaking directly to Evangelical Christians through Brody, did say that “Christians and pastors and everyone in between should agree that our principles have to be draped in the concepts of grace, love and respect and that’s not code language. That’s the New Testament so I don’t think there should be any problem with that thinking in our party.”

Priebus also told Brody, “I happen to believe that our principles are sound. I do believe, and I still will tell you that our party believes that marriage is between one man and one woman. Our party believes that life begins at conception.”

“If you’re looking at the evidence,” Chairman Priebus, who is 41 and a member of the Greek Orthodox Church added, “what you will see is a party that embraces life, a party that embraces marriage and a chairman that understands that there’s only one sovereign God and that we ultimately aren’t dependent on what happens in politics.”

Of course, in one fell swoop, Priebus tossed away America’s agnostics, atheists, Muslims, Jews, and anyone who supports a woman’s right to choose, and, of course, anyone who supports LGBT civil rights, including same-sex marriage.

Ironically, in May, Gallup reported “Americans’ tolerance of a number of moral issues up since 2001.”

Currently, 55 percent of Americans support expanding marriage to include same-sex couples, 59 percent believe same-sex relations are “morally acceptable,” about 18 percent “have no explicit religious identification,” 60 percent believe single parenthood is OK, 91 percent believe birth control is acceptable, and 52 percent believe in a woman’s right to choose.

Earlier this year, Gallup also noted that Americans see the GOP’s inability to compromise as its greatest weakness. 

In a press release, Democratic National Committee Press Secretary Michael Czin responded with this query:

“The question for Chairman Priebus and the GOP is simple, if they don’t support tolerance, what exactly do they stand for?”

Watch:

Should gays permit discrimination in the name of tolerance?

There’s an article up on RealClearPolitics, a right-wing site, about how gays should prove that we truly believe in tolerance by letting anti-gay bigots discriminate against us. Get it? We prove we’re for freedom and diversity and tolerance by making sure people who hate us are able to freely discriminate against us.

Last time I checked, that was the problem in the first place – people discriminating against us. So tolerating their discrimination isn’t exactly a step forward. It’s called stagnation.

Specifically the article is dealing with gay marriage, and how “intolerant” gays get when florists and bakeries refuse to work gay weddings (in the law, that’s called public accommodations discrimination). Coincidentally, all of these supposedly-oppressed “heterosexual” florists and wedding planners are the same talking point the officially-designated hate group, Family Research Council, brings up when trying to diss marriage equality for gays. And that talking point already got shot down by the official fact-checkers at Politifact.

But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that all of these oppressed straight florists are being threatened with jail time for refusing to sell flowers to gay couples.  The notion that gay couples should put up with is a bit silly. The standard for judging whether florists, or wedding venues, should serve gay couples is the same standard we use for any other copule: Does civil rights law permit you to discriminate in the provision of public accommodations to other legitimately married couples?  (And more generally, does civil rights law permit you to discriminate against customers based on their gender, race, national origin, religion etc. – all the traditional  categories of civil rights law).

If society, via its laws, doesn’t permit you to discriminate against other marriages you might not like – such as when blacks marry whites.

Remember, in Mississippi recently nearly half (46%) of Republican primary voters thought inter-racial marriage should be illegal – only 40% thought it should be legal.  So if we give people the freedom to not serve weddings they don’t like, good luck getting married in Mississippi if your intended spouse is of a different race.

So when I hear people talk about how gays can “prove” how tolerant they are by tolerating the intolerance of others, I cry foul.