Steve Schmidt, Arizona Senator John
McCain's presidential campaign manager, is expected to endorse gay
marriage today during a lunchtime speech to Log Cabin Republicans –
a conservative gay group – at their annual convention.
Schmidt revealed his position on the
issue last month in an interview with gay weekly The
Washington Blade.
Schmidt, who has a sister who is a
lesbian, is expected to endorse gay marriage, arguing it is a
conservative issue.
“There is a sound conservative
argument to be made for same-sex marriage,” Schmidt will say,
according to speech excerpts published by CNN. “I believe
conservatives, more than liberals, insist that rights come with
responsibilities. No other exercise of one's liberty comes with
greater responsibilities than marriage.”
Like Schmidt, Megan McCain, daughter of
Senator McCain, is also a gay marriage supporter. She too is
expected to participate in the convention over the weekend and is
likely to urge the Republican Party to make its political tent more
gay friendly.
“I am determined to build a
more-inclusive GOP,” McCain recently wrote in an editorial titled
Memo
to the GOP: Go Gay at Tina Brown's online publication The
Daily Beast. “If the Republican Party has any hope of gaining
substantial support from a wider, younger base, we need to get past
our anti-gay rhetoric.”
In his speech, Schmidt compares gay
rights to civil rights, an idea gay marriage opponents reject.
“It cannot be argued that marriage
between people of the same sex in un-American or threatens the rights
of others,” he says in the speech. “On the contrary, it seems to
me that denying two consenting adults of the same sex the right to
form a lawful union that is protected and respected by the state
denies them two of the most basic natural rights affirmed in the
preamble of our Declaration of Independence – liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness.”
“That, I believe, gives the argument
of same sex marriage proponents its moral force,” Schmidt will say.
The four-day convention ends Sunday.