4:11 pm Feb. 26, 20133
Only two members of Congress were among the several dozen Republicans who signed on to a legal brief asserting the constitutionality of same-sex marriage, and one of them was upstate New York congressman Richard Hanna.
Hanna's support for the brief comes in defiance of last fall's election results, when three of the four Republicans in the State Senate who voted in favor of same-sex marriage were defeated at the polls. And, in the eyes of same-sex marriage opponents, what Hanna did was even worse.
"It's much more egregious," said Brian Brown, the president of the National Organization for Marriage.
"To sign on to this completely novel and erroneous understanding of our law is an embarrassment to him, and obviously they should be primaried," he added.
Hanna has run afoul of conservatives before, with relatively moderate positions on abortion and LGBT issues and his comments that the House was too deferential to its "extremes."
After running without a primary in 2010, and with the support of the Conservative Party, Hanna beat a primary challenger with 60 percent of the vote in 2012, and then won the general election without the blessing of the Conservative ballot line.
But Brown, who called from Capitol Hill, said he had already started discussing a primary to Hanna, and that his organization is determined to send a message at the federal level, where the next battles might be fought.
"There's absolutely no doubt that we are going be involved in the next election for Richard Hanna's seat," said Brown. "What folks don't understand is that we have Republicans and Democrats who support us, but if a Republican betrays the party platform, betrays his constituents, and does what Richard Hanna does, you can bet we're going to primary him. And if a Democrat wins in the end, so be it."
Only two of the Senators who voted for equality were defeated, Sen. Alesi retired and didn't seek re-election, and Steve Saland actually won (however barely) the GOP primary and probably would've been re-elected if the guy he beat in the primary hadn't run on the Conservative line.
Glad to see he had the courage to vote his conscience and take a risk. Not all that common!
I just do not understand how extending equal treatment under the law to all citizens of the United States affects any other persons rights. No one is required to obtain a same-sex marriage, nor is Mr Hanna requiring that states perform same-sex marriages. He just agrees that 1) the states have the perogative to define marriage - it is NOT a federal function under the Constitution and 2) once a state recognizes a same sex marriage, the federal government is required under the full faith clause to recognize that marriage.