Jon Stewart Reveals Why Republicans Won’t Win Gay Marriage Debate
After a week of pride and progress, Jon Stewart returned to The Daily Show Monday and dismantled a weekend’s worth of conservative punditry and — to quote Justice Antonin Scalia — “pure applesauce” over the Supreme Court’s recent decisions on healthcare and marriage equality.
Stewart’s primary focus was the reaction to the marriage equality decision, which drew every bit of fear-mongering from the survivors of what Stewart dubbed the “Good News-magedon.” While classic arguments like the slippery slope towards polygamy and “Won’t somebody please think of the anti-gay florists?” were on rotation, Stewart homed in on those who blasted the Supreme Court (well, the five Justices who ruled in favor of marriage equality) for doing their job.
Republican presidential hopefuls Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz seemed confounded that such a decision could be made by unelected lawyers, while Mike Huckabee went so far as to say that was “not the America our founding fathers created.”
“Then why did they put that article in the Constitution?” Stewart asked incredulous.
Even dissenting justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito seemed perplexed by their own position. In his dissent, the latter bemoaned how the ruling will discourage “those who cling to old beliefs” from expressing their views in public at the “risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers and schools.”
“Right — oh, and you mean that like it’s a bad thing,” Stewart cracked. “I mean, you know, why can’t we just continue disliking and shunning the people we’ve always disliked and shunned? Everybody was always okay with it — but them.”
But as Stewart concluded, it’s not judicial activism or politically correct policing that’s keeping Republicans from winning the marriage equality debate. It’s basic common sense experience. Even Donald Trump told CNN he’s for traditional marriage before admitting his three marriages were anything but.
“You’re not going to win the marriage equality fight because even a man pathologically disposed to not understanding other people’s points of view — unless it is also labeled Trump — even he gets it!” Stewart exclaimed.