Summary: It must suck to be Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman right about now. The Senator’s dramatic reversal of his position on marriage equality, from opposition to support, together with his disclosure that his 21-year-old son Will, a junior at Yale, is gay, has called forth attacks from marriage equality supporters and from angry, hair-on-fire extremists of the religious right. Marriage equality supporters have condemned the Ohio senator for being insufficiently empathetic, while the angry rightists have demanded that he either “change” or reject his son. Ronald Reagan pointed out that political change usually begins around the dining table, and Harvey Milk noted that the cause of LGBT civil rights usually does better when our straight neighbors actually know queerfolk. Rob Portman is going through much the same evolution that millions of Americans have gone through in the last generation. Those of us who support marriage equality should cut him and Will a break and not demand an absolute purity of motive from him that many of us would find impossible to muster in ourselves.
By: Paul S. Marchand
It seems that Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman has had a “Road to Damascus” experience with respect to the issue of marriage equality, altering his position from “oppose” to “support,” declaring his position forthrightly in an opinion piece in the Columbus, Ohio, Dispatch. Such experiences, representing as they do decisive, nay, irrevocable reversals of view, have long been a part of the cultural heritage of the Roman-Christian West.
Since the time of Saul of Tarsus’s dramatic conversion to Christianity which began with his God-confronting experience on his way to persecute followers of Jesus Movement in Damascus, the concept of a dramatic volte-face, of a 180° shift in opinion, has usually been referred to as a “Road to Damascus” experience.
Yet, the road to Damascus differs for every soul that travels it.
Both Ronald Reagan and Harvey Milk understood, perhaps even more than the late, great Tip O’Neill, that politics isn’t just local, it often begins around the dining table. Harvey Milk, in particular, understood that when advocating for equal rights for queerfolk, nothing helped get the point across quite as much as actually knowing an LGBT person.
On marriage equality, Rob Portman’s road to Damascus seems to have run right through his dining room for the most Milkian of reasons; the Senator’s son, Will, 21, a junior at Yale, is gay. Moreover, Will Portman has apparently been out to his family for the last two years.
Yet, as a unique as every human being’s road to Damascus may be, it must suck to be Rob Portman right about now. The Senator has taken considerable flak from both sides of the marriage issue. From one side, the Senator has been excoriated for lacking empathy. The gravamen of such criticism is that marriage equality was not an issue the Senator could support until the issue surfaced right in the middle of his own family; under such a construct, it is apparently more important to be supportive in the abstract than to come round to a position of support because one may have been moved by the compunctions of family.
Social conservatives have excoriated both Portman père and Portman fils, the father for supporting marriage equality, and the son for simply being gay. The Senator has been attacked for allegedly lacking principle and not standing up for “godly ways,” while he has been urged, often in the nastiest terms imaginable, to subject his son to so-called reparative therapy, and to reject his son and cast him out if his son refuses to “change.” The sheer nastiness of the commentors on the discussion thread attached to Sen. Portman’s op-ed piece in the Dispatch, calling down the wrath and ill will of an angry Old Testament deity upon him beggared description, and was some of the most sickeningly hateful speech I have ever beheld on an Internet comment thread.
Assailed as he is from both the purist left and the angry, hair-on-fire “Christian” right over his heartfelt candor, it must suck to be Rob Portman right about now.
Yet, those of us who have been on the side of the angels in the marriage equality struggle should consider cutting Rob Portman of little bit of slack on this issue. At the risk of reifying as canonical Harvey Milk’s observation, or worse, over-linking it with Ronald Reagan’s homely political acumen, we should acknowledge that Pauline conversions like Sen. Portman’s don’t occur in abstract vacuum. Advances in civil rights for queerfolk usually occur when those of our straight neighbors who happily consign our queer butts to the back of the bus suddenly discover, mirabile dictu, that they actually know one or more gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered people.
In 2013, the reality of having a queer friend, a queer coworker, a queer neighbor, or a queer child has become so matter-of-fact that a majority of Americans have experienced it. Notwithstanding such antediluvian fools as Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, who claims that there has never been a homosexual in the recorded history of his family, most Americans are within --- at most --- two degrees of separation from a GLBT person.
Such a reality of nearness, together with the substantial statistical likelihood that while working in Washington, Sen. Portman would have encountered queerfolk on Capitol Hill, suggests not only that the Senator may well have been psychologically habituated to the possibility that one of his children might be gay, but also that Portman would have sought out counsel from persons within his own party, including former VP Dick Cheney, who were out as the parents of LGBT children. Will Portman’s coming out to his dad may not have been as much a surprise as otherwise thought.
But, neither Rob nor Will Portman will ever again have the luxury of not participating in the national conversation about civil rights and marriage equality for queerfolk. To a certain extent, I can empathize to a greater degree with Will Portman then with his father. Will Portman now finds himself injected into the vortex of the highly public debate at a time when politics has become a full contact, no holds barred, Breitbart-nasty, enterprise in which little, if any, attention ever gets paid to personal destruction or collateral damage. At best, Will Portman can hope to be spared anything but an Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame. At worst, he will be pursued, belabored, and even stalked by right-wing religious fanatics.
Still, faulting Rob Portman for being “insufficiently empathetic” strikes one as holding the Senator to an unreasonably high standard. Would it have been better if Sen. Portman did not know a single queer person, if he had acted solely out of some kind of abstract attachment to an impersonal principle? Such a view strikes one as naïve. That is not how opinions are formed. In an America in which a majority of voters want to get rid of all those scoundrels on Capitol Hill, but who remain convinced that their own Representative or senator is a fine fellow who deserves reelection, we would be foolish to think that personal considerations don’t or shouldn’t matter in politics.
Ronald Reagan was right when he noted that great political change often begins around the dining table, and Rosa Parks was right in her understanding that significant change also can happen when a single person dares to take a seat at the front of the bus.
Of course, Rob Portman is no Rosa Parks and he’s no Ronald Reagan. He is simply one of millions of Americans having to adjust a priori opinions in the face of an unquestionable reality that such opinions, if persisted in, will do harm to the very family values he professes to uphold. Blood is thicker than water, so let’s give Rob Portman --- and Will, too--- a break and leave off demanding a purity of motive from him that many of us would find impossible to muster in ourselves.
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Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City. Having served eight years in public office, he can understand why Rob Portman might want to be careful in his utterance, particularly when reversing himself on so live an issue as marriage equality. Mr. Marchand litigated one of the first marriage equality cases in California, twenty years ago. The views herein are his own, and are not intended to constitute legal advice.
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