Letter to the Editor

Response to 'Indiana political parties tangle with identities'

Thursday, June 12, 2014

To the Editor:

On June 9 the Banner-Graphic published an AP article from Indianapolis titled, "Indiana political parties tangle with identities." The article states that at our convention, we Republicans, "fought over whether gay marriage should be addressed in their party platform. And Republican Chairman Tim Berry searched for ways to keep them together."

The article goes on to say that the next day there was a "key fracture" within the party over gay marriage. We did vote on a platform plank regarding this issue. In the 2012 platform, the plank read, "We believe that strong families are the foundation of virtue and that such families bring forth citizens capable of self-government as well as properly motivated public servants so essential for a successful republic."

The proposed addition to this year's platform reads, "We believe that strong families, based on marriage between a man and a woman, are the foundation of society . . ." It was put to a vote and those who wanted to retain the 2012 wording were clearly in the minority.

The article states that those who wanted to pull the language were "social moderates," implying simply that they were either for gay marriage or for a more tolerant attitude toward gay rights but this does not exactly capture the essence of the debate.

Newspaper reporters were not permitted on the floor and so perhaps they could not hear the discussion among the delegates. All they could see was the vote and looks can be deceiving.

Some of those who voted to remove the language were not actually for gay marriage. They voted for the removal of the language because they believe that Republicans as proponents of small government and liberty should not endeavor to legislate morality.

The Republican Party is the party of liberty. We believe that the government is best which governs least and so by including the, "man and a woman" language in our platform, we are actually granting government authority over that which it should have no control. Marriage is a private covenant between two people and God.

To include this language in the platform is to acknowledge that the government has authority over these private matters and thus to enable a federal government which already has too much authority to grasp at even more. We are not a fractured party and there is perhaps no intense fighting as the article might have implied, but the Republican Party is undergoing a kind of self analysis in order to determine how best to represent its constituents and their beliefs without dispensing with liberty and enlarging the authority of the federal government.

Jess L. Norton

Putnam County delegate

2014 State Republican Convention