Add one more to the chorus of conservatives, activists and legal analysts calling on Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens to refuse to defend the state's gay marriage ban. Too bad he won't listen.
That's Page Pate, an Atlanta trial lawyer and analyst for WABE and CNN. He, like so many others, wonders why Olens can't be more like Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway, who tearfully discussed in March his refusal to defend the state's marriage ban in court.
But Olens calls that "callous and lawless." And he said this week, as seven gay Georgians filed a federal lawsuit challenging the state's marriage ban, that he will fight it in court. Nevermind that most everyone thinks he will lose. Like Pate and WSB political analyst Bill Crane.
"Clearly" public opinion, he says, including among younger conservatives, is moving in the direction of "'I don't care or Let's treat everybody the same'", a view they also express on issues like medical marijuana.
"We're at a watershed moment in American politics," Crane says, predicting "a majority of states...if not all 50" will have legalized gay marriage by the 2016 election cycle--depriving the GOP of the "wedge issue" it's used the last several elections to get its voters to the polls.