SALT LAKE CITY, UT — Former Utah Governor and 2012 Republican presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman, Jr. used a prominent conservative journal to announce his full support for same-sex marriage.
Writing in The American Conservative on February 21, Huntsman insisted that, “There is nothing conservative about denying other Americans the ability to forge a marriage with the person they love. All Americans should be treated equally by the law.”
In an editorial piece titled “Marriage Equality Is a Conservative Cause,” Huntsman called upon the political right “to take a hard look at what today’s conservatism stands for,” and said that supporting marriage equality for all Americans is “the right thing to do.”
He also sounded a cautionary note to his fellow Republicans, urging them to take a long hard look at its unilateral stance against marriage rights. “The American people will not hear us out if we stand against their friends, family, and individual liberty,” Huntsman predicted.
“Marriage is not an issue that people rationalize through the abstract lens of the law; rather it is something understood emotionally through one’s own experience with family, neighbors, and friends,” Huntsman wrote. “The party of Lincoln should stand with our best tradition of equality and support full civil marriage for all Americans.”
A member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormon Huntsman was elected to two terms as chief executive of the Beehive State before resigning to serve as U.S. Ambassador to China under President Obama.
As Governor of Utah, he supported civil unions, but acknowledged on Thursday he believed that designation to be a first step towards full civil rights for LGBT Americans.
“Civil unions, I believed, were a practical step that would bring all citizens more fully into the fabric of a state they already were—and always had been—a part of,” Huntsman wrote. “That was four years ago. Today we have an opportunity to do more: conservatives should start to lead again and push their states to join the nine others that allow all their citizens to marry.”
