Democrats Disrespectfully Use Minorities in a War to "Redefine" Marriage

On Sunday afternoon, while driving my sister and her four children home from church, she began reading a Facebook post sent by a friend. “St. Clair and Macomb Co friends, Lisa McClain, our US Rep. just voted against keeping interracial marriage legal. In case you were wondering.”

“No,” I immediately said. “That’s not what happened.”

My younger sister isn’t nearly as interested in politics as I am, but she quickly guessed what happened. “They mixed the bill with something else?”

Of course.

McClain is my sister’s representative. She’s a spitfire who deeply cares for her constituents and their liberties, and it’s insulting that anyone would think she’d vote for such a thing.

“This is how you know Democrats have so little respect for minorities,” I told my sister. “They included it for narratives like this, to use us.” The post has been shared over 3,000 times, and it was missing vital context.

Republican Congresswoman Lisa McClain at an in Michigan. Photo by Darlene Dowling Thompson

The purpose of the “Respect Marriage Act,” is mainly to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, signed into law by President Bill Clinton. DOMA defines marriage between a man and a woman and allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriage. The law was overridden by United States v. Windsor and Obergefell v. Hodges. After Roe v. Wade was overturned, and Justice Clarence Thomas voiced his concerns about substantive due process, Democrats have gone into hysterics. They claim if Obergefell can fall, then interracial marriage could be next. At least, that’s what politicians and media pundits are pitching to the masses. But not only is there no signal for enough votes to overturn Obergefell; Dobbs v. Jackson stated multiple times that its ruling should not apply to it.

Jonathan Adler, a professor at Case Western University believes the claim that the Court would overturn Loving v. Virginia is “preposterous.” He said on CNN, “Even if the Due Process elements of Loving were eviscerated, the Equal Protection rationale would remain as robust as ever.”

He continued on, “I don’t know which is worse, that some people would make such a cynical claim for political purposes, or that some people learned in the law actually believe it.”

Respect for Marriage Act doesn’t redefine marriage to include same-sex couples or couples of different races, nor does it make them legal. It merely acknowledges marriages that are already legal and does so across state lines. But if your state has a ban, the ban still exists.

Republicans are saying the Respect for Marriage Act is performative and a waste of time. Critics are accusing Democrats of trying to squeak out votes with wedge issues because they’re getting clobbered by things voters seriously care about like inflation, high crime, and record-high border crossings.

Democrats don’t think gay marriage alone is enough to stir up their base. They must also include minorities, so they can accuse Republicans of being racist, on top of homophobic. It’s a similar tactic to when the media dubbed the Parental Rights in Education Bill “Don’t Say Gay,” even though it wasn’t discriminatory toward same-sex orientation. But they needed the entire LGBT+ community enraged because gender identity alone wouldn’t drum up enough political outrage. Now, the Democrats are using minorities, even though Black and Hispanic Americans are more likely to support a traditional view of marriage.

Americans are mostly over the hump on the issue of gay marriage, but the holdouts are Americans who visit church more than once a week. Do you want to take a guess which ethnicity has the highest percentage? You guessed it, Black Americans. Even back in 2008 when President Barrack Obama was elected, gay marriage was banned in California, of all places. A whopping 70% of Black voters supported Prop 8.

Pew Research

Now, times have drastically changed since then. Republicans have begun to take a more libertarian approach, stating they’d rather get the government out of the marriage business. But even if they come to support contracts between consenting adults, regardless of sexual orientation, that doesn’t mean Americans are ready to abandon their religious convictions and views of marriage. And they certainly don’t want to be opened to possible religious discrimination, like Jack Phillips and Masterpiece Cake Shop, or Catholic adoption agencies and foster agencies, like St. Vincent in Michigan.

David French wrote a piece recently about the Republicans growing coalition of voters and attributed it to “The God Gap.” Democrats are continuously moving to radical positions that don’t jive with the cultural and religious views of Black and Hispanic Americans. The article has an old quote from a Yale law professor, Stephen Carter. “Of all ethnic groups, Black Christians are the most likely to attend services, pray frequently, and read the Bible regularly. They are also — here’s the kicker — most likely to believe that their faith is the place to look for answers to questions about right and wrong. And they are, by large margins, the most likely to believe that the Bible is the literally inerrant word of God. In short, if you find Christian traditionalism creepy, it’s Black people you’re talking about.”

Christians believe God made males and females. “A man shall leave his father and mother, cleave to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” They see the complementary nature of this dynamic; emotionally, spiritually, and especially biologically. Even if you don’t believe in a Creator, the biological complimentary nature of men and women—of natural procreation and family building—still applies. It doesn’t matter what your skin color or ethnicity is; these facts remain the same. In other words, interracial marriage is fundamentally not the same thing as gay marriage, and their fates should not be intertwined in the same bill.

Do Democrats believe Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) voted the bill down because he wants to delegitimize his own marriage? No. Do Democrats believe Justice Clarence Thomas is criticizing substantive due process because he needed a creative way to divorce his wife? Of course not. If you want to criticize a politician for voting down a bill, feel free to do so. But to frame it so dishonestly is offensive, despite being predictable.