Ranting On...Rob Portman & Roy Moore

Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH)

I didn't write much on the blog this year about coming out week or Spirit Week (I've done this in the past), but when it comes to issues of coming out (something I did personally 13 years ago on Sunday), this week I keep thinking about Sen. Rob Portman.  Portman made national headlines in 2013 when he publicly became the first incumbent Republican senator to come out in favor of gay marriage.  Since then, though he's hardly been a cheerleader for the cause, he's been relatively consistent on the stance, perhaps driven by his son Will's status as a gay man, which has made his relatively dismissive comments about Judge Roy Moore in Alabama all the more shocking.

Portman has not, as far as I've been able to find, said that he will not support Roy Moore in the December election, but his public comments have hardly been emphatically for one side or the other, and he's certainly not helping to keep Roy Moore out of the Senate.  He said, when asked about it, that Moore's "going to be for tax reform, I think" and has largely played naive when he has been asked about Moore, a tactic other Republicans like Dean Heller or Tim Scott have also employed.  I call bullshit on this, though, as it's impossible to imagine that sitting US Senators don't know about the only special election happening in their midst, and particularly aren't aware of Roy Moore as he's been a major public figure for decades.  It'd be like actors claiming they'd never heard of Mel Gibson's racist tirades or attacks against women.  You might not want to talk about it because you're probably tangentially benefiting from them, but don't play us as fools for trying to convince us that you don't know who this man is.

Because when it comes to gay rights, Roy Moore is a homophobic bigot, and one of the most terrifying men in America for gay people.  It makes me genuinely nervous for him to now have power in the Senate, as his stances against gay people go beyond simply denying us marriage rights.  Moore thinks that we should overturn Lawrence vs. Texas, making homosexual relations illegal.  He believes that gay people should not be allowed to serve in government, and that gay people should not be allowed to raise children, going so far as to say that in a divorce a parent should lose custody if they are gay.  He was kicked off the Supreme Court in 2016 for refusing to grant gay marriage licenses, despite the Supreme Court saying he was required to do under the law, and has stated that he thinks that the five Supreme Court justices who backed gay marriage should be impeached for their votes.  He has blamed gay people for causing 9/11.  While he's been embroiled in other controversies (particularly deeply racist attacks against Barack Obama and Keith Ellison), he is perhaps most well-known at this point for attacking gay citizens and wanting to inhibit their rights.

Chief Justice Roy Moore (R-AL)

I don't believe that Rob Portman supports any of the things that Roy Moore does on gay rights.  I'm not quite going to buy that he's the most enthusiastic politician in the world when it comes to gay rights (he doesn't even rise to the level of someone like Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who has made it a genuine pet issue), but he seems to have cared enough about his son to risk his political future in 2013, and I suspect that even if his son weren't gay he still wouldn't, in 2017, think that homosexual people shouldn't be able to serve in any form or government or should be imprisoned for being gay.  But he is a powerful man, and one who could send a message to his party by saying "NO!" emphatically to Roy Moore becoming a member of his caucus.  That he doesn't shows an incredible lack of courage, and perhaps a lack of a moral center on Portman's part.

I'm not saying that Portman is the only one to blame here.  There are also Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, I believe, who also back gay marriage and are currently in the US Senate (call me out in the comment if I missed a Republican senator there), and neither have been a beacon of courage when it comes to Moore.  And I am confident the list is much longer of people who think that homosexuality should be legal, even if you discredit marriage from the equation.  Many of these Republicans haven't outwardly endorsed Moore's bid, but it's safe to assume that unless they say otherwise, they back the Republican nominee due to their history with the party.  All of these individuals are showing intense cowardice in my opinion, but because of Portman's familial connections to gay rights, he stands out as being the most upsetting silent supporter of Moore here.

I remember what it was like to come out, and I suspect in the process I changed the opinions of a few people in my life when it came to gay rights.  I had some experiences that were not so good, but by-and-large the coming out process was largely a good thing-discrimination I faced as a gay person didn't come from these people as a whole.  And even if it had gone worse, people I loved would have probably gotten a bit of the benefit of the doubt as I knew I'd wear them down and they just needed time.

But there was a line that would have been crossed if anyone in my life had supported someone like Roy Moore, or not done everything within their power to stop him from reaching higher office.  Moore wants to take away Will Portman's rights to work in the public sector, he wants him to lose all of his rights to ever be a parent or get married, and he wants to throw him in jail simply for practicing being gay.  He also wants to punish anyone who would defend his sexuality, including by proxy his senator father.  That sounds bleak, but there's no other way to interpret these actions-just ask Roy Moore if he thinks all of these things, and he'll be happy to tell the questioner "yes."  I don't like discussing family members of politicians, but I am shocked that Rob Portman doesn't feel some sense of shame here.  If my parent didn't publicly condemn Roy Moore and say vote for Doug Jones (whom, it's worth noting, is more than qualified to be a senator AND wouldn't even put Mitch McConnell's majority in jeopardy...and would only serve for three years before a less insane Republican could beat him), I wouldn't be able to look them in the eye.  Rob Portman and other supposedly pro-gay Republicans need to realize what they are doing in silence-they are making the world harder, bleaker, scarier, and more dangerous for LGBT people.  Roy Moore in the Senate may help with tax reform, but that feels like an awfully shallow price to pay for your common decency.  And the clock is clicking on whether you want to make that trade.