Director, Commonwealth Policy Center

Commonwealth Policy Center Executive Director Richard Nelson had an opinion editorial in yesterday's Courier-Journal. Nelson's concern is the seeming collapse of defending marriage as the union of a man and woman within the ranks of the GOP. In the editorial, Nelson lays out a brief case for marriage, it's importance, and the consequences of redefining it, particularly along the lines of religious liberty. A teaser:

Before you can say “Aw, shucks, Aunt Bee, it’s the 21st century, get over it,” marriage revisionists will pull the race and bigotry cards from their stacked deck of moral relativism and say that denying “marriage equality” is akin to refusing service to blacks at a lunch counter. Problem is that we are not talking about race. Nor are we talking about restaurant service. We are talking about a covenant that Christians, Jews and Muslims believe a sacrament that God ordained. We’re also talking about an institution that many in the non-religious community recognize as irreplaceably different from all other relationships. Stating that some relationships are different isn’t an act of bigotry.

Male and female relationships are bound with a potency that other relationships lack. But the ground has shifted. Now the question is: Should people of faith be forced to violate their conscience by materially participating in an act they believe sacrilegious?

[…]

The Republican Party should be inclusive. In fact, Americans have an inherent inclination toward inclusiveness. But when inclusiveness defines down an irreplaceable human relationship to the realm of “whatever” then it is time to revisit the meaning of inclusiveness.

Nelson's concerns are prescient. The GOP's stand on principle and its inclusion of religious conservatives will stand or fall on how it positions itself on marriage.

Go and read the rest here.