Bill Haslam Quotes
In general, everybody should admit the world is changing really fast, and it's hard for the conversations to keep up. I mean, it's hard to remember now, but when Barack Obama ran for president, he was against gay marriage.
Ebert, Joel, and Dave Boucher. "Gov. Bill Haslam signs controversial therapy bill." The Tennessean, 27 Apr. 2016.
At the time he and the Obama administration had favored legal domestic partnerships for gays but opposed same sex marriage. However, he and the President were having moral and legal doubts and there seemed to be an acceptance of homosexuality emerging in society. The administration then changed their position and within just a few years, same sex marriage had become legal in over 10 states and was being politically debated in many others. In many parts of the country, Biden’s prediction came true in much of America, and the change in political and public opinion was occurring in more and more places.
Two days earlier, New York Voted to legalize gay marriage and Alesi became the first Republican to vote for gay marriage. New York was the first state to legalize gay marriage by an act of their legislature and not by the judiciary on Constitutional grounds. Generally, most of the Republican politicians were opposed to marriage equality as they had the religious right wing of the party for whom gay marriage was anathema.
There was a national debate ongoing regarding whether two members of the same sex might marry. The Constitutions of several states prohibited discrimination against anyone including gays so that the courts in some cases were called upon to rule on the constitutionality of prohibitions against gay marriage. While nationally, the majority of the people were then opposed to gay marriage, in some states (including Kansas), the majority was vehemently opposed. The American Constitutional system and tradition, almost uniquely protects the rights of minorities from the “tyranny of the majority.” When the Supreme Court ruled that schools must be racially integrated, the majority of the country might have preferred a certain degree of racial discrimination. Brownback on this issue called for the will of the majority to prevail over the minority rights of teh Constitution, but on a woman’s right to abortion which was favored by the majority of Americans, he opposed the tyranny of the majority. The issue politically almost always comes down to "whose ox is gored." A decade later, with a generational shift, the vast majority of Americans suported same sex marriage and the majority of the states legalized and Browbak then claimed the right of the minority (States like Kansas) to not be forced the recognize the marriages that the will of the majority had allowed.
Earlier, he had opposed same sex marriage, but as the population as a whole had a change of mind on this issue, so did he. By 2013, 16 States had modified their laws to allow gay marriage.
William Edward Haslam is an American businessman and politician who served as the 49th governor of Tennessee from 2011 to 2019. A member of the Republican Party, Haslam previously served as the 67th mayor of Knoxville, Tennessee.
