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What the G.O.P. Platform
Represents
AUG. 21, 2012
Over the years, the major
parties’ election-year platforms have been regarded as Kabuki theater scripts
for convention week. The presidential candidates blithely ignored them or
openly dismissed the most extreme planks with a knowing wink as merely a
gesture to pacify the noisiest activists in the party.
That cannot be said of the
draft of the Republican platform circulating ahead of the convention in Tampa , Fla.
The draft document is more
aggressive in its opposition to women’s reproductive rights and to gay rights
than any in memory. It accuses President Obama and the federal judiciary of “an
assault on the foundations of our society,” and calls for constitutional
amendments banning both same-sex marriage and abortion.
In defending one of the last
vestiges of officially sanctioned discrimination — restrictions on the rights
of gay men and lesbians to marry — the platform relies on the idea that
marriage between one man and one woman has for thousands of years “been
entrusted with the rearing of children and the transmission of cultural
values.”
That familiar argument
ignores the fact that the number of children raised by one-parent families has
been rising steadily since the 1970s, long before anyone was talking about
same-sex marriage. Census figures indicate that one out of every two children
will live in a single-parent family before they reach 18. Studies purporting to
show that children of lesbians are disadvantaged have been shown to be junk
science. Marriages between people of the same gender pose no threat to
marriages between men and women.
The draft attacks President
Obama for not defending in court the Defense of Marriage Act, which prohibits
federal recognition of same-sex marriages. It calls that decision a “mockery of
the President’s inaugural oath,” when in fact Mr. Obama would have been wrong
to ignore lawyers who concluded that the law is unconstitutional.
In passages on abortion, the
draft platform puts the party on the most extreme fringes of American opinion.
It calls for a “human life amendment” and for legislation “to make clear that
the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.” That would
erase any right women have to make decisions about their health and their
bodies. There are no exceptions for victims of rape or incest, and such laws
could threaten even birth control.
The draft demands that the
government “not fund or subsidize health care which includes abortion
coverage,” which could bar abortion coverage on federally subsidized
health-insurance exchanges, for example.
The platform praises states
with “informed consent” laws that require women to undergo medically unnecessary
tests before having abortions, and “mandatory waiting periods.” Those are among
the most patronizing forms of anti-abortion legislation. They presume that a
woman is not capable of making a considered decision about abortion before she
goes to a doctor. The draft platform also espouses the most extreme Republican
views on taxation, national security, military spending and other issues.
Over all, it is farther out
on the party’s fringe than Mr. Romney ventured in the primaries, when he
repudiated a career’s worth of centrist views on issues like abortion and gay
marriage. But the planks hew closely to the views of his running mate, Paul
Ryan, and the powerful right-wing. Mr. Romney has a chance to move back in the
direction of the center by amending this extremist platform. It will be
interesting to see if he seizes it.
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