The other day, Texas Governor Rick Perry made news and excited gay wingnuts by invoking the 10th Amendment and suggesting that, though he personally opposed marriage equality, if another state like New York decided to legalize marriage for gays and lesbians, that was okay with him. Apparently the Wingnuts That Be sounded the alarm and got to the man Molly Ivins used to call Governor Goodhair, because now Perry is singing a different tune:
Texas Governor Rick Perry (R), one of the country’s most prominent defenders of the 10th Amendment, is making an exception when it comes to gay marriage. After initially telling reporters that it’s “fine with me” if states like New York legalize same-sex unions through their own legislature, Perry is pulling a 180 and calling for a Federal Marriage Amendment.
Perry, who is flirting with a presidential bid, clarified his position to Family Research Council president Tony Perkins in an interview.
“I probably needed to add a few words after that ‘it’s fine with me’ and that it’s fine with me that a state is using their sovereign rights to decide an issue,” he said. “Obviously gay marriage is not fine with me. My stance hasn’t changed.”
Follow the bouncing ball here. Rick Perry is a Tenther, which means he is an adherent to the slowest of all Constitutional interpretations, and thus believes that states’ rights are paramount. At least his original stance made sense. But then he went in front of prissy old Tony Perkins and, called on his sins against the butthurtness of anti-gay wingnuttia, “clarified” that he thinks the federal government should override states’ rights on this subject, because remember, y’all: when it comes to hating gays and women and minorities, the hate trumps all principles for wingnuts. It’s sort of like how bigots hate judges, unless a legislature grants rights to the LGBT community, at which point they hate legislatures. The only overriding principle is their juvenile hatred.
Perry did make a meager attempt later in the interview to tie his support for writing discrimination into the Constitution back to his 10th Amendment word salad, but just made it worse in the process. He essentially said that it’s okay to stomp on New York’s states’ rights, but that he’s worried that New York’s decisions would cause poor Texans to someday have to be nice to gay people. Poor, put upon Texans. If only liberals states could influence Texas to stop executing people like it’s going out of style. [It is.] But his statement only proves the point of my last paragraph: wingnuts have absolutely no freaking principles! They love states’ rights, indeed — for their own backwater states. [I live in one of the backwater states. I can talk smack.] Ask them to fight for the rights of liberal states to do what they want? Oh hell no.
Because they are babies and they don’t play well with others. Sorry, Gay Patriot guys: the wingnut, as usual, is not your real friend.
[h/t Blue Texan]
