ilyagerner:

ccindecision:

“I have come to believe that if two people are prepared to make a lifetime commitment to love and care for each other in good times and in bad, the government shouldn’t deny them the opportunity to get married. That isn’t how I’ve always felt. As a congressman, and more recently as a senator, I opposed marriage for same-sex couples. Then something happened that led me to think through my position in a much deeper way.

Two years ago, my son Will, then a college freshman, told my wife, Jane, and me that he is gay…”

- Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), announcing that after wrestling with the issue, he now supports marriage equality. 

Now if only one of the Portman kids could come out as poor or unemployed, maybe Congress could pass a decent budget.

That Rob Portman —  an actual honest-to-God Republican Senator and not just a has-been party operative or a GOP flack looking to be an MSNBC contributor — supports marriage equality is awesome. All hail Rob Portman and his son.

I only wish politicians of all ideological stripes would learn to generalize from something other than their immediate experience.

Does everyone remember Sen. Mark Kirk, the Illinois Senator who suffered a stroke and then realized that stroke victims on Medicaid may not be receiving optimal care? This is from the Chicago Sun-Times:

“I will look much more carefully at the Illinois Medicaid program to see how my fellow citizens are being cared for who have no income and if they suffer from a stroke,” Kirk said. He said in general a person on Medicaid would be allowed 11 rehab visits in Illinois.

“Had I been limited to that I would have had no chance to recover like I did. So unlike before suffering the stroke, I’m much more focused on Medicaid and what my fellow citizens face.”

I’m glad he cares about low-income Illinoisans who have suffered strokes! But there are also lots of people on Medicaid who have diabetes or heart disease or cancer and they all need help too. And beyond Medicaid, the poor need housing and transportation and affordable child care and food and heaven-forbid, actual money, so that they won’t be so poor anymore. 

I struggle with empathy quite a bit, but I don’t need to have a stroke to realize that low-income people need access to high-quality medicine and a a slew of other services. 

So, back to Portman. It’s great that his son came out. It’s a reminder that announcing your sexual identity to your family is a very powerful political act. It’s great that Portman supports SSM now. No snark about that.

But we can’t have policy being made entirely based on personal experience. Portman probably doesn’t have a transgender son. Or a Muslim son living in Pakistan. Or a daughter who can’t pay the rent. But the policies he helps make in Washington affects all those people and it’s not asking too much to expect elected officials to base their policy views on something other than their family circumstances.