FoBoBlo

GW CR's pulled their share of funding from McCain's upcoming appearance because of her support of marriage equality.

Gay marriage and the College Republicans have a dicey relationship here at Foggy Bottom’s premier university, GWU. In fact, if one slavishly followed the wheelings and dealings of the all-important political groups on campus, it was gay marriage, not eye-laser wielding Muslims, that started the schism that lead to the increased visibility, and tragically increased legitimacy, of the Young America’s Foundation. February of 2007, the College Republican e-board voted against an event to promote traditional marriage with wedding cake (for heteros, presumably). The event was then held in secret in Ivory Tower after rumors of a counter-protest. While the e-board members involved didn’t jump ship, members who were looking to embrace this more negative, more radical conservativism went for YAF.

YAF hosted a more elaborate, public, and ridiculous event in 2008 for Valentine’s Day, where dudes in suits handed out cake and information about how marriage was under attack from the left. Allied in Pride chose that day to rally for marriage equality.  While YAF existed pre-2007’s traditional marriage debacle, their outspokenness on this issue helped bring them more publicity, giving them more power to host bigger events to highlight their conservative perspective.

That said, 2009’s Marriage Equality rally drew no protest at all from YAF. While fighting for traditional marriage used to be YAF’s bread and butter, possibly because the CRs had decided it was too divisive an issue for their members, even they felt no need to highlight it. However, AiP said they were inspired by the CRs’ event “marriage is between a man and a woman.”

Are the CRs trying to embrace the old type of conservatism by pulling their sponsorship for Meghan McCain’s February appearance? Meghan McCain has been hailed for being a fresh, modern face of a party that’s best know for it’s old, grumpy white dudes. She’s pro-life…and pro-marriage equality! She blogged her way through the 2008 campaign, and is a twitter celebrity with almost 80,000 followers. She was an independent until 2008, where she registered Republican as a gift for her father, but since she’s been standing firm in her party ID.

I had high hopes that 2010 was ushering in a change in the campus Republicans’ reputation on gay marriage. The ugly history of wedding cakes had a change to be forgiven and forgotten when Allied in Pride reached out to the College Republicans (itself a huge deal) to bring Meghan McCain in for a talk titled “Redefining Republican: No Labels, No Boxes, No Stereotypes.”

While Michael Komo may not have had the most angelic intentions at heart by not informing the CRs that the talk was the keynote lecture of “Marriage Equality Week,” the fact is Meghan McCain is still giving a talk about what it means to be a Republican. For McCain, being a Republican has always meant supporting gay marriage, and she was a major part of last year’s Log Cabin Republican Convention in DC.  The CRs should have been aware of the time coinciding with Marriage Equality Week, as well as McCain’s stance on gay marriage, and Komo should have made sure they had all this information. However, both groups still had the opportunity to show students they were willing to work together to understand and talk about a common issue.

Even McCain seemed surprised, tweeting about her disappointment that young Republicans at GWU couldn’t move past old views. The CRs have essentially moved backwards – embracing the tenuous position that caused nothing but in-fighting in 2007 rather then allowing the more conservative and more radical YAF bear that torch. The CRs should leave the negativity and work to give their members a diverse set of speakers, rather than refusing to support Republicans that stray from out-dated party beliefs.

More background: Hatchet Blog with McCain’s tweets.

Update: The GW Hatchet came out with an editorial placing blame on …. everyone.