Todd Hagopian stills stands on the conservative side of things, but he recalls the day he heard a convincing argument that changed his mind on gay marriage.
I remember the day my views on gay marriage officially changed. It was March 16, less than a week after Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) dramatically revealed his change of heart on the issue.
His decision was based on a very personal story in which his son revealed to him that he was gay. Portman realized that he wanted his son to have the same opportunities for happiness and marriage that his other children will have.
Portman’s decision was slammed in the Twitterverse and in the mainstream media as self-serving, with people turning this deeply personal change of heart into something much more sinister.
Rather than embracing the converted Senator, gay marriage supporters rained insults down on him and his political party.
Said insults ranged from calling him a flip-flopper, to asking if he would change his mind on the minimum wage or abortion laws if his children ran across hard times financially or were involved in an unplanned pregnancy.
Gay marriage opponents called him a traitor and an ultra-liberal, despite his solidly conservative credentials. He instantly went from a potential presidential candidate, to someone who was broadly hated on the left and right.
Personally, I am a recovering neoconservative, who is beginning to lean more and more towards “wacko bird” libertarianism. The issue of gay marriage is one that I have struggled with for a long time, and I have participated in several spirited debates with my friends and family throughout the years.
While I am fully capable of making a full defense of the Republican party, it has been years since my inner-argument amounted to much more than a slippery slope debate which I was not overly passionate about.
That being said, until recently, I have not found the motivation to sit down and really dig into the issue to see if my overall opinion had changed.
Rob Portman changed that for me. After hearing his announcement, I was surprisingly not angry, as I typically would have been if a champion for one of my political positions had changed his or her mind.
I began looking back at the years of debates, thinking about how the strength of my opinion had decreased over time, and I dove deep into the issue. My position hadn’t changed over the next 48 hours of internal debate.
However, over those 48 hours, I realized that my opinion had definitely changed over the last several years.
I now support gay marriage.
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While you likely won’t see me marching at Washington, or screaming at those who advocate against gay marriage, I thought it was worth writing this article to show that it is okay to change your position on key issues, and that we should not demonize each other when that happens.
Whether you change your opinion based on something that happens in your personal life, or whether it was a slow evolution over time, political advocates should welcome these new converts with open arms.
On these issues where each side has the support of around 50 percent of the country, how will your side ever become a clear majority if you don’t embrace those who are willing to let their opinions evolve over time?
The only way to guarantee effective political discourse in this country is to be respectful of each other’s opinions, and to allow people to change their minds when they have heard a good argument. Otherwise, what is the point of trying to make a good argument?
I now proudly support gay marriage, and I challenge each one of you to take a look at some of your own political positions this week.
In a world where people are allowed to change their minds on key issues without being demonized, would there be any issues you might like to alter your stance on?
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About the author
Todd Hagopian is a family man, with two young boys and a beautiful wife at home. He is a Senior Manager in a Fortune 150 company, and is a political commentator in his spare time. Todd has written more than 100 blog posts, his writings range from politics, to business, to op-ed. He has also published over 50 quote books, and other collections, under the “Hagopian Institute” moniker.
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This article originally appeared on Elite Daily.
Photo used by permission of Ethan Collings.
Gay rights are human rights and marriage equality is NOT the only right that gay people have been denied. They can be fired in 30 states just for being gay and denied housing on that same basis. Hate crimes against gay people surpass that based on race and gay men are still barred from donating blood.
And this is just considering the U.S. And other western more liberal countries. In other places, gay men are killed or imprisoned just for being gay!!!
Did we really need to know that he “has a beautiful wife at home”? Surely, ‘wife’ would have been sufficient?
I applaud you on your opinion of gay marriage. They say that the youth of America is more tolerant overall, and I welcome that kind of viewpoint. (I don’t know how young you are, but Elite Daily being the voice of generation Y…) That said, I find the story that you bring as your illustrative epiphany kind of obvious. So Portman comes out in favor of gay marriage: good, I guess. But Nancy Reagan was in favor of stem cell research only when she realized how terrible a disease like Alzheimer’s could be. And Dick Cheney was much more lax… Read more »
For the record, I’m 44. Not really part of Gereration Y.
It has no effect on me personally. I’m not aware that I have any family or close friends that are gay, just a couple of co-workers.
As some who have read my comments on various articles here may have noticed, I am rather conservative, and I disagree (in part or in whole) with many of the articles on this site. Nevertheless, I read it nearly everyday, because I enjoy reading other viewpoints, and it forces me to at least give fair consideration to other viewpoints. That being said, I am staunchly in favor of gay marriage. I think committed relationships and families are in the best interest of society as a whole, and it makes no diference to me whether that relationship is between a man… Read more »