Marco Rubio claims supporting marriage equality is disrespectful and condescending

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) completed his latest flip-flop this weekend, attacking Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for supporting marriage equality, accusing her of ridiculing “Americans with traditional values.”

Rubio, who endorsed twice-divorced Donald Trump in 2016 and continued to support him even after he admitted to serial sexual assaults, was upset that Warren had made a joke at a candidate forum on LGBTQ issues.

Warren had been asked at Thursday’s LGBTQ Town Hall what she would tell her own supporters if they disagreed with her support for same-sex marriage. The Democratic presidential hopeful said that she’d tell a man who believed marriage is only a union between one man and one woman to marry a woman — quipping, “assuming you can find one.”

An outraged Rubio tweeted that the moment “vividly captures the condescension of elites & their incessant ridicule of Americans with traditional values” and suggested that it would encourage anti-LGBTQ people to want to fight back “even in a crude or vulgar way.”

Vividly captures the condescension of elites & their incessant ridicule of Americans with traditional values. It elicits glee among celebrities & blue check brigade. But for the millions sick of being disrespected it elicits support for fighting back,even in a crude or vulgar way https://t.co/uJgfyxMpUQ

— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) October 12, 2019

Rubio has a long history of opposing equal rights for LGBTQ people. He opposed allowing same-sex couples to adopt, opposed allowing gay and lesbian people to serve openly in the military, and voted against a ban on employment discrimination. In 2012, he even recorded robocalls against same-sex marriage for the notorious National Organization for Marriage, an organization founded to support California’s 2007 ballot initiative banning gay marriage that now works to oppose “LGBT rights abroad, transgender rights, nondiscrimination laws and adoption by same-sex couples,” according to Right Wing Watch.

But in 2016, after initially promising not to seek reelection to the Senate, he used the mass shooting at an Orlando gay nightclub as his excuse to reconsider. Upon announcing his run, he told a group of Christian conservatives that “loving our LGBT neighbors is not a betrayal of what the Bible teaches,” and that the nation’s “has been marred by discrimination against and rejection of gays and lesbians.” While he continued to oppose marriage equality, he argued that “those who have a different view have a right to their views.”

Now, he appears to have abandoned any tolerance for the two-thirds of Americans who believe in marriage equality. And his apparent excusing of “crude and vulgar” attacks as justified by a joke he viewed as elitist stands in stark contrast with his comments back in July. After Trump told four Democratic Congresswomen of color that they should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested from which they came,” Rubio refused to denounce Trump’s racism and said, “I don’t read into people’s intentions.”

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.