Michael Steele, from hilarious diversion to hateful prick

It's all fun and games until somebody loses their civil rights.

Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele has done it again, and his most recent statement puts to shame his past often hilarious pronouncements that he would bring the Republican brand to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings,” that Rush Limbaugh is more than a mere "entertainer," and (to listeners of his radio show) that he would "empathize right on your behind." Yesterday Steele told Republicans they should OPPOSE GAY MARRIAGE ON ECONOMIC GROUNDS, from the AP:

Republicans can reach a broader base by recasting gay marriage as an issue that could dent pocketbooks as small businesses spend more on health care and other benefits, GOP Chairman Michael Steele said Saturday.

Steele said that was just an example of how the party can retool its message to appeal to young voters and minorities without sacrificing core conservative principles...'

'Now all of a sudden I've got someone who wasn't a spouse before, that I had no responsibility for, who is now getting claimed as a spouse that I now have financial responsibility for,' Steele told Republicans at the state convention in traditionally conservative Georgia. 'So how do I pay for that? Who pays for that? You just cost me money.'

This is just sickening, it's far more offensive than this week's earlier fracas when Arkansas state rep and 2010 GOP senate candidate Kim Henderson referred to Senator Chuck Schumer as "that Jew." Steele is arguing that civil equality and social justice should be halted because, you know, they cost money. What's worse he's suggesting that this shallowest of all possible reasons for opposing gay marriage now be how republicans define the issue.

Not to draw too obvious (or perhaps overly broad) parallels but imagine Dixiecrats campaigning in the Jim Crow South arguing that we can't financially afford a racially integrated society; imagine states in the 19th century, arguing women shouldn't have the right to own property because the economic ramifications would be too great; hell the South argued that the union would go bankrupt if slave labor was abolished. This is the esteemed company Steele's logic for banning same-sex marriage is keeping.

That I, a Gay American, am not worthy of the financial protection that marriage confers is even more hateful than the standard "the bible says it's a sin" argument against same-sex marriage. The sin argument comes down to a difference in religious beliefs, Michael Steele by contrast just came out and said queers aren't worth a dime. What a prick!