A few years back, I met a young man named Alexander McCobin at a conference. McCobin mentioned to me that he was starting up a new student group dedicated to liberty. The group was going to be called Students for Liberty (SFL). Two years later, SFL now hosts several regional and international conferences a year and has active chapters on over 250 campuses. You can learn more about the organization here.
McCobin recently spoke at the American Conservative Union’s (ACU) annual conference where he caused quite a stir by thanking the ACU for allowing GOProud, a gay Republican group, to co-sponser the conference. The video is below:
I applaud McCobin for his stance and the courage to make such a statement at CPAC. Liberal blogs like Daily Kos and ThinkProgress have twisted the story to make it seem like McCobin’s comments were unwelcome by the audience. This could not be further from the truth. If you actually listen to the video, you can easily hear that cheers and applause vastly outnumber boos from the audience. Furthermore, when another panelist following McCobin, Ryan Sorba, took to the mic to condemn the ACU for the same thing, he was met with widespread boos and jeers. As much as they might like to characterize conservatives as knuckle-dragging reactionaries, McCobin’s actions and the audience’s reaction prove otherwise. 60-80% of CPAC attendees are under the age of 30. This shows that the new generation of conservatives is a lot more tolerant and socially progressive than some liberal activists would have you believe.
This event is also significant as it gives me optimism for the future. Regardless of how today’s struggles for marriage equality turn out, we can be assured that the tide is turning in the long run. It’s not a matter of whether or not America will achieve marriage equality, it’s simply a matter of when it will happen.
- Josh McCabe
The millenial generation is socially tolerant, yes, but one of the least economically libertarian generations in decades: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1497/democrats-edge-among-millennials-slips
And that’s a bad thing?
I *hope* what you believe is true. From my own, anecdotal, experience, it isn’t. While I agree, there were more cheers in the video than boos; there were vastly more who didn’t do anything but sit still and keep their thoughts to themselves. Also, how many are at this meeting? Are they more likely to be conservative/progressive students with both ambition for their own future careers and a cause? But maybe that is your point: Future leaders of America?
Josh you have a very good point. However, I don’t think you can decouple the marriage equality issue from religion; and judging from how many times the word “God” or “Creator” were said, I’m no that optimistic yet that future libertarians and conservatives see marriage as a right or liberty issue. It continues to be seen through the lens of religion, and religion continues to be so embedded in their projects that makes me question how the future may look like.
it’s worth keeping in mind that we know something about how applause and booing work. there are a lot of interesting details about contagion vs atomism, but the key finding is that people are more reluctant to boo than to applaud. i think this implies that in any given situation the people who do nothing are probably a little closer to the people who boo than to the people who applaud.
Being from a country where “marriage equality” exists, I must say I’m not convinced this is a good thing. I’m not saying I believe marriage is a man/woman thing only and that I’m a religious conservative or anything. But the thing is that marriage is subsidized by the government through allowing tax breaks to married couples but not unmarried couples.
The way I see it, anyone should be able to contractually make whatever agreements they like – including the “till death do us apart” kind. Such contracts should not be limited to certain sexes, races or even numbers of people. A contract is a contract is a contract is a voluntary agreement, and government should have nothing to do with it. Or rather: all such contracts should be valued equally.
But it is not clear that such a contract needs to be called marriage. Many countries (e.g. France( today require couples to register their contracts with the government so that it is official, and then they can go through whatever procedures or blessings to call it whatever they like. Churches wed couples, but it is not a church function to enforce contracts. If churches do not wish to wed gays, it is the full right of those churches not to do so.
The problem is not that churches don’t wed gay couples, but that religious institutions have been made public policy. Today government define “marriage,” which is certainly not a government function since marriage is very much a religious institution. It is the refusal by government to recognize other types of contracts that is the real problem.
I am aware of the fact that gays want to “get married” just like religious heterosexual couples, but this is a confused demand they’re making. They should demand that all partnership contracts are equally recognized by government, not that religious institutions are forced to accept and embrace people they want nothing to do with. I fail to see how demanding special rights (which is really what they are doing) could ever solve anything.
I support and would fight for their right to not be discriminated by government, but only to the extent that government’s restrictive, religious bias is removed; I don’t support their demands to gain access to certain religious institutions, which is a very different issue.
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