Adding new meaning to “playing for both teams,” some of the GOP’s most prominent donors are key backers when it comes to legalizing same-sex marriage.
According to The Washington Post, billionaire hedge fund manager Paul E. Singer has raised millions for Mitt Romney and donated further millions to a super PAC supporting his campaign. Singer also gave $1 million to Freedom to Marry and another $1 million to American Unity PAC, a super PAC supporting Republican congressional candidates in favor of gay marriage.
The father of a gay son, Singer has contributed an estimated $10 million towards marriage equality and he’s not alone:
[Freedom to Marry and American Unity PAC] have received major donations from at least three other Republican hedge fund managers: Cliff Asness of AQR Capital Management, Seth Klarman of Ballpost Group and Dan Loeb of Third Point, according to records and officials. Singer and Asness were among the key backers of a successful push last year for same-sex marriage legislation in New York.
Freedom to Marry’s national campaign director, Marc Solomon, sees the support from these cash-cow conservatives as an important shift in the bipartisan marriage debate, telling The Washington Post: “The strong support that we’re getting from members of both parties indicates that this has become a mainstream American cause. This is not the same wedge issue that it was eight years ago.”
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So on one hand you have the Kris Kobachs, on the other you got the Paul E. Singers and in the middle the Log Cabin Republicans slow-dancing to “Maybe This Time.” Solomon is certainly right — gay marriage is not the divisive issue it was for Democrats and Republicans. It’s a divisive issue for Republicans and other Republicans.
Cam
The problem would be, that he isn’t tying his donations to Romney to him being less bigoted towards gays.
So he is showing his son just how much he cares about him, but spending millions to elect a man who has said gays should not serve in the military and who has asked for the U.S. Constitution to be altered to prevent gays from getting rights.
If you send millions of dollars in to support the KKK, a donation to the NAACP doesn’t change that.
Peter
We’re all human beings with complex motives and beliefs. No one can truly be defined by simplistic party labels.
Michael
Don’t these donations, more or less, cancel each other out…at best? Even if you are socially “liberal” and fiscally conservative(I don’t agree that Republicans are truly conservative when it comes to the country’s pocketbook, but that’s another conversation., donating money to put a man in office who has already pledged to fight against the social equality that you support sort of defeats the purpose of donating to both groups. In this case, you really can’t have it both ways.
Cam
@Peter:
True, But when you belong to a group thats actions have been geared in a certain direction it is absolutly fair to define somebody, for the purposes of that discusion by their association.
I.E. If you are talking about somebody who is a memger of a vegan group, it is not wrong to define them as somebody sympathetic to a vegetarian point of view.
When Log Cabin Republicans have attacked Obama for signing a DADT repeal. They attacked him for coming out in favor of gay marriage. They endorsed the opponent of the Congressman who introduced the DADT repeal and cheered his defeat etc…
It is therefore not unfair to catagorize them as a group that does not put the defeat of bigotry towards gays as one of their top priorities.
MarionPaige
The only thing shocking here is that this story is in the F*cking Washington Post, a newspaper that essentially created the “all the gays just wanna marriage fiction” with the New York Times.
What is insightful is to link this “news” to a previous study which showed that less than 10% of gay people donated money to a gay .org and that gay .orgs get more than half of their funding from their top 10 or so donors. In short, Gay .Orgs and Gay Media aren’t defendant on gay people, their money comes from corporate donors and corporate advertisers. In general, Corporations support the Republican Party’s agenda rather than The Democratic Party’s Agenda.
All of these “Freedom To” .org have to know where their money is coming from and, all studies I know of says that that money is not coming from gay people.
While there are no “numbers” proving that a shit load of gay men are desperate to go through life married to a fucking man, there is conclusive proof that GAY MARRIAGE IS THE MOST EFFECTIVE WAY TO GET CONSERVATIVE VOTERS TO THE POLLS.
Do I need to do the math here?
Search the phrase “gay media, get .orgs and the Republican Party are all funded by the same people” and it will lead you to something I wrote about three years ago.
JustSaying
One thing I have learnt about the gay community is that there is no pegging it as a demographic. Mairion Page I don’t know about other gays, but I do yearn to get married and have the rights that come with it.
The reason why so many openly gay men are so sexual is because we have nothing else to connect to as a culture. No real gay culture. Rights will give us that; even if it is not defined as marriage we will be able to give one person ourselves, money, children all those things that give life depth and meaning.
Ruhlmann
@JustSaying: I get horny because I am not married? Heres to singlehood. Getting married and having kids in suburbia might give your life depth and meaning but suburbia isn’t some kind of universal truth. If the suburbs were such a great place to be there wouldn’t be a 50% divorce rate. Careful what you wish for.
JustSaying
Haha 🙂 I just mean there is no real gay society. Like, there might always be a large divorce rate with straight married couples, but does that mean the right
shouldn’t be offered to gays?
Depth is important.. 7 years into a relationship it isn’t all bullmoose horn dog anymore.
What can you offer to your gay partner but obscure/tentative goals if not a binding moral, and legal, agreement? I am not glorifying surburbia, but the concept of a family; you know structure. Even if it isn’t utopia.
MarionPaige
During World War II, Churchill sacrificed an entire English city to attack by Germany because England didn’t want Germany to catch on to the fact that Germany’s code had been broken.
There two things not in doubt here:
( 1 ) Gay Marriage is a divisive issue that provokes backlash against the gay community and it rallies people hostile to gays to go to the polls and vote against gay issues and people friendly to gay causes; and
( 2 ) you could, relatively speaking, count on one fucking hand the delusional queens who have the slightest fucking interest in marriage.
England can sacrifice an entire city for “the greater good” but a handful of Queens will see the entire gay community (and the Democratic Party) go down on the outside chance that one day they might be able to fucking marry in their little town.
JustSaying
I have more faith in humanity. It has to start somewhere. One small step at a time. People thought that killing DADT would crumble the military system: nope!
As conventional wisdom fades, and people become stronger to confess to others ( and stand up for themselves ) these great myths and lies about homosexuality and homosexuals will start to fade. It takes an example, and an opportunity.
Given the chance to excel I think you would be amazed at the amount of “delusional queens” (very negative perspective) that would jump at the opportunity to share their life with someone they love.
brent
@Cam: Under that kind of thinking he can’t give money to the democratic party either, since it is filled with homophobic blacks and latinos.
brent
@Michael: Yes but the same is true for the democrats. When you give the democrats money they use that money to help advance the interest of blacks and latinos, who then turn around and vote against gay marriage.
JustSaying
England can sacrifice an entire city for “the greater good” but a handful of Queens will see the entire gay community (and the Democratic Party) go down on the outside chance that one day they might be able to fucking marry in their little town.
Are you kidding me hahahaha I could give a £¥€$ about your preferred party! Where are my rights?
JustSaying
Oh lord get me outa here
JustSaying
Gay people = bitter and crazy
Cam
@MarionPaige:
Nice try liar. But I have to say, the tactics you NOM trolls use are getting more creative. You got caught out for trying to plan to drive a wedge between gays and blacks so now here you are trying to pretend that rights are all about a few men who want to get married. Silly NOMers, you should look at the stats. Gay women get married just as often, AND marriage isn’t about people who want to get married right now, just like DADT wasn’t about most of us wanting to join the military.
It is about the federal govt. giving gays the full spread of federal rights and not relegating us to second class status. Everybody knows that….well….except you of course.
But you know….nice try.
brent
@Cam: I don’t understand the point that marionpaige is trying to make, but i disagree that i’m trying to create a wedge between blacks and gays. Would you accuse gay liberals of trying to draw a wedge between gays and mormons? And yet blacks don’t favor gay rights anymore than mormons. The mormons may have help to fund prop. 8, but it was blacks and latinos who supplied the votes.