Older people experienced and know the history, but for those who forgot how the GOP used Gay people as political tools against their will to make laws to use against them, or just never thought about it, let me remind you.

Back when Ronald Reagan ran for president, he got support from the Moral Majority, a name used by Jerry Falwell, to push an evangelical agenda on the United States. The Southern Baptists had lost big time when their go to monster under the bed, Black People, were “allowed” to exercise their rights as U.S. Citizens.

Jews were lost as convenient scapegoats with the knowledge of the Holocaust, and with the Blacks no longer the standby group because of recent civil rights moves, at a meeting of evangelical pastors and televangelists who could taste the money they could rake in by claiming only they and Jesus could protect the world from the enemy of their own creation, and as creators they could modify misrepresentations as needed to come up with a new enemy, the decision was made to adopt the new societal threat, Gay people.

The Stonewall Rebellion was not that far in the past and Gay people were slowly getting their Creator endowed rights recognized and the fact that they are part of “All Men” was finally being honored. Until then, the Gay Community had been rather silent for safety, but after Stonewall it was becoming more visible and, without a lot of knowledge about Gay people because truth was squashed by folklore and tropes, the religious right, knowing people were uninformed and needed education, chose not to educate people about facts but chose, instead, self-serving and monetarily advantageous tropes and lies.

The Moral Majority presented a new, fuzzily undefined target that it could exploit.

Gays had few mainstream outlets to explain facts, but the Moral Majority, connected to churches, had practically limitless access to ways to get their word out.

The information was purposely false but effective in misleading people into mistreating fellow citizens for political gain.

We were coming for you, your children and wives with the intent of destroying civilization as we know it.

Reagan owed his election to the religious right and he paid them back big time when AIDS hit.

He and his party used AIDS to show that God did not approve of us getting our rights and respecting ourselves, and the phrase “God, Guns, and Gays” entered politics. The Moral Majority loved him and, frankly, used him.

A quick review of history since the 1980s shows the many times Gays were invoked as the cause of whatever ill politicians and religious leaders claimed only they could cure.

The Defense of Marriage Act and Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell were based on the falsehoods chosen because they were seen as effective. No facts backed up any justification for these laws as in some countries Gays could marry and join the military with no societal destruction. The basis for anti-Gay legislation were the falsehoods that produced church donations and contributions to political candidates.

It was the same in the past with Catholics and the Know Nothings, the Chinese, Irish, Italians, Blacks, and Jews, where laws were passed because people believed those who lied about them, and it is a tactic the GOP has continued with Mexicans, Transgender citizens, and all those Brown people coming from countries we screwed over creating the need for them to leave.

The only attention the GOP gave to the Gay Community was in finding ways to use Gay people as a wedge issue based on fear of the nonexistent to raise money and pass bills. Religion used it to scare people to Jesus because they realized they just weren’t getting the Good News across as good news.

There was no money in that.

Leading from behind, the GOP has seen society grow up around Gay topics.

I was once told by a bartender in a Boston Gay bar that one of the best things to happen for Gays being simply a part of society was that with the rising rents in Boston in the sketchy areas the Gays had transformed to desired housing, there was a Gay diaspora to the suburbs whose residents saw them washing their cars, mowing their lawns, going to work, painting their houses, in short doing the same things the neighbors did except it was two men or two women whose intimate lives were just as public and as relevant to the heterosexual neighbors as those of the other heterosexual neighbors.

Yet, during that time leading up to Marriage Equality in Massachusetts, politicians and religious leaders in opposing it, presented their stories as proof of the danger which in no way matched what people were seeing in the suburbs.

Because of Clarence’s post-Roe suggestion that Marriage Equality should go next, the House voted on a bill to protect it, and 47 Republicans voted yes. For decades the GOP has opposed Marriage Equality using it as a wedge issue and spreading hurtful tropes in the process.

In spite of Republicans insisting that marriage is between one man and one woman because of their chosen God, there is support for this federal law protecting Marriage Equality.

That bill is now in the Senate which is the wayward step child of the Moral Majority.

Tammy Baldwin, the first openly gay senator, has been working for Gay rights since she entered politics in 1986 and acknowledges that the world has changed in its knowledge and attitudes. She is leading the attempt to get the needed votes in the Senate.

With 71% of U.S. adults in general and 55% of Republicans saying they think Same-Sex Unions should be recognized by law, Baldwin pointed out,

“People began to see that the sky has not fallen.”

Also, because of increased visibility and refusing to be forced into the closet, rather than suddenly coming into being in great numbers, it is being seen we have always been here, that Americans, including members of congress, have friends, family, and co-workers who are Gay, and that we had been there in the old days but they just didn’t know.

“That probably has the biggest impact on where people land. This is a vote of conscience.” she said.

Many people may not realize that the Defense of Marriage Act that allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states is still on the books. The new Respect for Marriage Act would make recognizing marriages national and also recognize as legal marriages regardless of sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin. These rights, to marry beyond the heterosexual model and the limits of race, are not listed in the Constitution so people like Clarence Thomas could move to rescind related rights because they are not so enumerated and, therefore, do not exist.

Like the legality of his marriage does not exist.

Obviously Marriage Equality is no longer the Bogey man it had been, except for those who desperately need to hold onto old worn out tropes for money or religious conversion, which translates to money. It is becoming a non issue.

Proof of that and the obvious effect ignoring the statistics could have on politicians, when asked how he would vote when the bill gets to the senate, Ron Johnson said simply,

“I see no reason to oppose it.”

He is joined in supporting the bill, at least for now until other political considerations enter, by Republican Senators Rob Portman, Susan Collins, and Thom Tillis.

Tammy Baldwin has a chance of getting the votes from the acknowledged undecided Republicans, Mitt Romney, Roy Blunt, Joni Ernst, and Mike Braun.

Democrats need 10 Republican votes and they are close and the bill could pass, unless senate Republicans pull a stunt like the one with the bill to help veterans.

Mitch McConnell has not stated where he stands, preferring to wait until Schumer holds a vote.

Finger in the wind?

In the House, Republican Representatives Elise Stefanik, Scott Perry, and all four Republican members of Utah’s congressional delegation supported the bill, but the majority did not.

The basic GOP argument is that SCOTUS is unlikely to overturn Obergefell, this is in spite of Thomas’s dissent and four justices on the bench who voted to rescind Roe v Wade after saying under oath they wouldn’t do that during their nomination hearings.

The other objection, rather Ironic considering how the GOP weaponized Gay rights, Marriage Equality, and Gay people, is the claim that Senate Democrats are playing politics by putting the bill on the floor.

They seem to forget that the defense of Marriage Act was introduced in the House by Republican Bob Barr and in the senate by Don Nickles, the 1996 Republican Party platform endorsed DOMA, and that all Republicans in both houses voted for the bill with only no vote coming from Representative Steve Gunderson an openly Gay man who watched what his peers were doing to him and heard the tropes they seemed to have no problem invoking while he was in the room.

Among the Republicans are the usual suspects who attempt to hide their bigotry by pretending their concern is not about substance but process.

Marco Rubio thinks the bill is a “stupid waste of time” because, “There is zero chance, below zero chance, that the Supreme Court or anyone is going to outlaw gay marriage in this country.”

Roe.

Johnson’s reason for voting for the bill is that it’s being settle law makes such a vote unnecessary, one way or the other, so he will just go with the flow. Just go through the unnecessary motions.

After all, “society has pretty well accepted it and moved on.”

Roe.

Ted Cruz, the Dominonist, opposes the bill but recognizes that “reasonable people can disagree” with him “and there is room for a diversity of views on that question.”

Senator Kevin Cramer says he will vote against it “unless I can be compelled somehow,” because of his evangelical Christian faith. but does admit “it’s not like I feel super strongly about it, either.”

And, as vital as the issue had been to getting donations, political office, and the resulting power for decades, his noncommittal stance is because “It’s more that people are ambivalent about it.”

Senator Portman who, as noted, supports the bill, has supported Marriage Equality since 2013 when his son came out of the closet. It hit home. He not only knew a good person who happened to be Gay, he had raised him to be that good man who happened to be gay and he did not validate the tropes. He believes people should be respected for who they are.

He got a lot of flak back then from his Fellow Republicans who have come closer to him by growth or, as in the case of Cramer, lack of principle for the sake of political ends.

Two possibilities.

The GOP, having moved on from what they had previously thought was the whole non-heterosexual thing, Gay men and Lesbian women, unaware that there is a lot more to sexual orientation that are contained in their philosophies, Gays and Lesbians, at least, are rather main steam and that let’s us know we have to use that acceptance as allies to all the other Letters and numbers.

Gays and Lesbians can relax.

Or, as foolish as they assumed women were by believing the Trump nominees’ lies under oath saying they would not touch Roe before rescinding it once they got the job, in this case, as in many future ones related to other group, they will issue assurances knowing full well that when the vote comes up, like Mitch McConnell, they will then expose their real vote.

The casual indifference expressed by people like Johnson is suspect.