FLASHBACK 2004: DEMOCRATS ARE SO FULL OF IT!

When Democrats Swore They Would Never Back Gay Marriage

Jon Allen follows HuffPost's intriguing advocacy journalism by quoting the few Democrats who haven't endorsed gay marriage yet. (HuffPost's been straight-up shaming them, naming the senators who have yet to flip and explaining that "the arc of history is moving in the direction of marriage equality.) He finds only two senators up in 2014 who refuse to endorse same-sex marriage. That's incredible. It was also predicted by conservatives nearly 10 years ago.

Above, you'll find a short video composed of the floor speeches some top Democrats made about SSM. At the time, Republicans wanted to block gay marriage in Massachusetts by amending the constitution with an official marriage definition. Democrats argued against that, but they didn't argue in favor of gay marriage. They argued that DOMA made such an amendment unnecessary. They assured people like Rick Santorum that the slippery slope case for gay marriage was bogus.

The new Democratic advocates for SSM fall into two camps. The first consists of people who always liked the idea of this but worried about losing national elections. In his memoir, Democratic consultant Bob Shrum remembers John Kerry fretting that the Massachusetts Supreme Court had forced Democrats to talk about gay marriage before they were ready to. "Why couldn't they just wait a year?" he asked Shrum, mournfully. The second camp consists of people who really do oppose the idea of gay people getting married. Republicans argued that this second camp was tiny, and that liberals were hiding behind it. They were right!

The lesson to be learned here is that whenever Democrats scoff at the idea of a slippery slope you can safely assume that they are either deliberately lying about their true agenda or they are too naive to be taken seriously.  Either way, they cannot be trusted.  The question to be answered going forward is whether or not this sudden rush to embrace homosexual marriage by the Democrats represents a shift to the Left for which they need to pay a political price next year and in 2016 or if this represents the Overton Window of public opinion shifting from radical to popular.  I think it's a bit of both.

On the issues of homosexual marriage (and gun control) there is no question that moderate Democrats are being purged, either in primaries or by leaving them to fend for themselves in states that voted for Romney last year.  The party that booed God at its convention last September is adopting positions that were still politically dangerous for them as recently as 2008.  Obama's "evolution" on the issue of homosexual marriage and subsequent victory in November has eased the way.

On the other hand, while I think that the polling we are being spoon-fed by the media is questionable, there is no doubt that public opinion on the issue of homosexual marriage has shifted in its favor.  This is why winning the culture is so important.  This is an issue that has found its way into the mainstream through the culture, primarily via Hollywood and academia.  It's also a triumph of messaging. The focus has been on "equality" and "civil rights" and "fairness."  Who can be against those things, right?

The focus of the dialogue must be changed to more accurately reflect the Left's agenda here: The continuing assault on our First Amendment rights.  The issue of homosexual marriage is a useful way to create a hammer with which to hit Americans over the head by classifying any opposition to the radical LGBT agenda as "bigotry."  It is not a coincidence that our inalienable rights to freedom of speech and religion as well as our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms are under constant attack these days.  The slippery slope is real.