Truth - Al Franken [50]
BEGALA: No, sir. I was there. It’s a point of personal privilege. I was there. He was my client. We did not let him speak because he would not endorse the ticket. Nobody gets to speak at any convention unless they support the candidate for president. That’s the only—
NOVAK: He wouldn’t speak because he was pro-life.
BEGALA: That’s not true, Bob. I was there. I helped make that decision. And you did not. This, I know firsthand.
You didn’t see many anti-Bush speeches at the Republican National Convention, did you? Neither did I. Why? Because the Republicans aren’t morons. As James Carville put it to The New Republic’s Michael Crowley, “You’d have to be idiotic to give a speaking role to a person who hadn’t even endorsed you.”
If you still think Democrats try to muzzle pro-life speakers, take a look at the list of people who did speak at the 1992 Convention. As Crowley noted, the podium was graced by “a slew of pro-life Democrats, including Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, Jr., Senators John Breaux and Howell Heflin, and five governors.” And pro-life speakers, from Breaux to Harry Reid, have graced every Democratic Convention stage since then. So, please, if you ever hear anyone repeat the “Bob Casey Wasn’t Allowed to Speak at the 1992 Democratic Convention Because He’s Pro-Life” myth, do me a favor. Hit him over the head with a pan.
Nobody likes getting an abortion. Except, perhaps, rape victims. It’s just that pro-choice people know that sometimes women get pregnant when they aren’t ready to have a child. Nobody enjoys unwanted pregnancies either. Which is why Democrats support access to birth control and comprehensive sex education that promotes abstinence but also provides accurate information about contraception. Because of policies like those, in the eight Clinton years which followed the convention where Bob Casey was prevented from speaking because he wouldn’t endorse the ticket, abortions went down every single year.
Most pro-life Americans are absolutely sincere about their beliefs. Not just pro-life Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, but also pro-life Republicans like Wheel of Fortune host Pat Sajak. I respect their convictions. But sometimes I just get the feeling that the pro-life movement is being used by politicians who don’t have the best interests of America’s fetuses in mind.
In the thirty-plus years since Roe v. Wade, reproductive freedom has been more explosive than any other issue in the culture wars. That is, until 2004. As Gary Bauer told The New York Times, gay marriage is “the new abortion.” Bauer meant that, like abortion, equal marriage rights were a culturally powerful issue being decided by judicial fiat. But if Karl Rove had said it, he would have meant it in the “Xbox is the new PlayStation” sense. It was a heavy, sharp, new wedge with which to divide America. Gay marriage had fabulous potential.
Uncharacteristically, Rove was a little behind the curve on same-sex marriage. After all, in 2000, he had let his candidate say that gay marriage was an issue best left to the states. But when the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that gay people, being people, should have the right to marry not just people of the opposite sex, but people they actually loved, all hell broke loose. Grassroots homophobes from coast to coast, but mainly between the coasts, started organizing state ballot initiatives and voter turnout drives in order to defend the sanctity of marriage from the Pink Menace rapidly sashaying their way.
Antigay activists were already primed to explode. On June 26, 2003, the Supreme Court had ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that consensual homosexual sex wasn’t just widespread, it was legal. Can you imagine that? So when the Massachusetts decision arrived on February 6, 2004, and, six days later, San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom started marrying off homosexuals on the steps of City Hall, it was clear to slippery-slopers that it wouldn