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Rand Paul on Civil Rights |
PAUL: Look, I don't want my marriage or my guns registered in Washington. And if people have an opinion, it's a religious opinion that is heartly felt, obviously they should be allowed to practice that and no government should interfere with them. One of the things that really got to me was the thing in Houston where you had the government, the mayor actually, trying to get the sermons of ministers. When the government tries to invade the church to enforce its own opinion on marriage, that's when it's time to resist.
PAUL: I do believe people ought to be left alone. I am a "leave me alone" kind of guy.
Q: But not when it comes to marriage?
PAUL: Well, no. States will end up making the decisions on these things. I think that there's a religious connotation to marriage that has been going on for thousands of years I still want to preserve that. But I also believe people ought to be treated fairly under the law. I see no reason why, if the marriage contract conveys certain things, that if [a woman] wants to marry another woman, they can do that and have a contract. You could have traditional marriage, and then you could also have the neutrality of the law that allows [same-sex couples] to have contracts with one another.
I have made it my priority to reassert the rights and privileges of the individual by standing up for the entire Bill of Rights. Our Federal Government has grown out-of-control and we must return it to its constitutionally enumerated powers. I believe that America can successfully protect itself against potential national security threats without sacrificing our inalienable rights
We must fiercely guard our Bill of Rights. I will continue to fight for the Constitution, individual liberty and the freedoms that make this country great.
But it's unclear how far--and to whom--Paul extends the argument that rights cannot be defined by behavior. Practicing religion, for example, is a behavior enshrined in the Bill of Rights, , as is the behavior of free speech. Does Paul believe those behaviors are protected rights?
A Paul spokesperson said the rights that count are those in the country's founding charter. "He does not classify rights based on behavior, but rather recognizes rights for all, as our Constitution defines it. Sen. Paul is the biggest proponent for protecting the Bill of Rights, which, as you know, protects the rights of all Americans as stated in our Constitution."
Paul continued, "I think having competing contracts that would give them equivalency before the law would have solved a lot of these problems, and it may be where we're still headed."
For Paul's vision of equal rights for same-sex couples through contracts to become a reality, the first step would be have to be a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court in June upholding state prohibitions on gay nuptials.
| Issue | Libertarian Party | Rand Paul |
|---|---|---|
| Abortion: | No laws for or against abortion | Life begins at conception |
| Gay marriage: | No laws for or against homosexuality | Don't redefine marriage |
| Free Trade agreements: | No laws for or against free trade | Use incentives on agreements |
| Campaign Finance Reform: | No laws for or against donation limits | Restrict lobbyists & PACs |
What about rapidly-changing opinions on the matter? He took a soft tone. "Society's changing," he said. "People change their minds all the time on this issue, and even within the Republican Party, there are people whose child turns out to be gay and they're like, 'maybe I want to rethink this issue.' So it's been rethought. The President's rethought the issue. A lot of people have rethought the issue."
Was Paul hinting that he, too, could change his thinking? He said, "I believe in old-fashioned traditional marriage. But, I don't really think the government needs to be too involved with this, and I think that the Republican Party can have people on both sides of the issue."
"You could rethink it at some point, too?" I asked. He shrugged. It wasn't a yes or a no.
Democrats have blasted the effort in Republican states to enact strict voter identification laws, arguing they disproportionately affect minority voters. Paul acknowledged that much of the animosity surrounding the debate centers on race. Republicans claim the laws are essential to combat voter fraud. In past comments, Paul has acknowledged fraud exists but that "Republicans may have overemphasized this."
"There's 180,000 people in Kentucky who can't vote. And I don't know the racial breakdown, but it's probably more black than white," he said.
PAUL: Well, you know, I think we have a lot of debates in Washington that get dumbed down and are used for political purposes. This whole sort of war on women thing, I'm scratching my head because if there was a war on women, I think they won. You know, the women in my family are incredibly successful. I have a niece at Cornell vet school, and 85% of the young people there are women. In law school, 60% are women; in med school, 55%. My younger sister's an ob-gyn with six kids and doing great. You know, I don't see so much that women are downtrodden; I see women rising up and doing great things. And, in fact, I worry about our young men sometimes because I think the women really are out-competing the men in our world. I think the facts show that women are doing very well, have come a long way. So I don't really see this, that there's some sort of war that's, you know, keeping women down.
For Paul, this seemed perfectly sensible. In fact, the senator went even further than Beck: "If we have no laws on this people take it to one extension further. Does it have to be humans? I'm kind of with you, I see the thousands-of-year tradition of the nucleus of the family unit. I also see that economically, if you just look without any kind of moral periscope and you say, what is it that is the leading cause of poverty in our country? It's having kids without marriage. The stability of the marriage unit is enormous and we should not just say oh we're punting on it, marriage can be anything."
At the same time, Paul suggests that the tax code and health insurance should be made neutral so that gay couples benefit from the same breaks as married ones. Like Rubio, he has said that gay marriage should be left to the states to decide. He said Sunday that he is okay with the government being "neutral" on gay marriage; in February he said he was "not sure" how he felt about DOMA.
But he's already willing to let other states legalize gay marriage and to let gay couples have some federal benefits; he could expand that to mean marriage in all but name.
PAUL: I think it's a really complicated issue. I've always said that the states have a right to decide. I do believe in traditional marriage, Kentucky has decided it, and I don't think the federal government should tell us otherwise. There are states that have decided in the opposite fashion, and I don't think the federal government should tell anybody or any state government how they should decide this. Marriage has been a state issue for hundreds of years. DOMA is complicated, though, because DOMA does provide protection for the states from the federal government. But, then part of it federalizes the issue. I think the way to fix DOMA is maybe to try to make all of our laws more neutral towards the issue, and I don't want the government promoting something I don't believe in.
Asked if he thought a private business had the right to say it would not serve black people, he said: "I don't want to be associated with those people, but I also don't want to limit their speech in any way in the sense that we tolerate boorish and uncivilised behaviour because that's one of the things freedom requires."
Since the furore, Paul has released a statement indicating that he would have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964 de-segregation bill, a position he declined to take a day earlier.
"I support the Civil Rights Act because I overwhelmingly agree with the intent of the legislation, which was to stop discrimination in the public sphere and halt the abhorrent practice of segregation," he said.
Opponent's Argument for voting No (The Week; Huffington Post, and The Atlantic): House Republicans had objected to provisions in the Senate bill that extended VAWA's protections to lesbians, gays, immigrants, and Native Americans. For example, Rep. Bill Johnson (R-OH) voted against the VAWA bill because it was a "politically–motivated, constitutionally-dubious Senate version bent on dividing women into categories by race, transgender politics and sexual preference." The objections can be grouped in two broadly ideological areas--that the law is an unnecessary overreach by the federal government, and that it represents a "feminist" attack on family values. The act's grants have encouraged states to implement "mandatory-arrest" policies, under which police responding to domestic-violence calls are required to make an arrest. These policies were intended to combat the too-common situation in which a victim is intimidated into recanting an abuse accusation. Critics also say VAWA has been subject to waste, fraud, and abuse because of insufficient oversight.
The Christian Coalition voter guide [is] one of the most powerful tools Christians have ever had to impact our society during elections. This simple tool has helped educate tens of millions of citizens across this nation as to where candidates for public office stand on key faith and family issues.
The CC survey summarizes candidate stances on the following topic: "Affirmative action programs providing preferential treatment to minorities"
The Christian Coalition voter guide [is] one of the most powerful tools Christians have ever had to impact our society during elections. This simple tool has helped educate tens of millions of citizens across this nation as to where candidates for public office stand on key faith and family issues.
The CC survey summarizes candidate stances on the following topic: "Federal Marriage Amendment to prevent same sex marriage"