Michael Carr, radical Log Cabin Republican, running for Colorado state senate

Michael Carr is the Republican candidate for Colorado’s State Senate District 31 due to a vacancy committee appointment. But his past remarks are a cause for great concern to anyone not on board with the LGBT political agenda.

I saw Carr speak at a February meeting of the Coalition for a Conservative Majority as part of a panel on diversity in the conservative movement.

Carr described himself as an Irish Catholic from the south side of Chicago. He now lives in the Capitol Hill neighborhood with his partner. Carr brought up the Illinois civil unions bill and how he had supported it and lobbied for it.

There was something about the bill he didn’t mention.

The State of Illinois used the civil unions bill to shut down Catholic adoption agencies that contracted with the state government to continue their decades of service. The oversight of over 2,500 children was displaced to other agencies in an entirely unnecessary move.

In the audience question time I addressed Carr about how that bill pushed Catholic Charities out of doing adoptions. I asked him whether there is a "zero sum game" situation between gay rights advocates and religious and social conservatives.

Carr had an easy out.

The closure of Catholic Charities adoption agencies was a shock to those who believed the promises that religious freedom would be protected.

All he had to do was voice his support for religious freedom protections and lament the bill wasn’t passed in a way that respects the diversity of opinion on a controversial issue.

Instead, Carr spent a few minutes defending the need for government to be neutral and serve everybody.

“Is there a zero-sum game?” I asked again. Again he dodged.

His comments were in line with his April 12, 2011 remarks at the Illinois Log Cabin Republicans blog opposing a bill to secure the right of religious organizations to continue their adoption services. Carr said supporters of that bill “should be ashamed of themselves.”

There is nothing shameful in recognizing that a married man and a woman are better for raising children than any other family structure. There is nothing shameful at wanting a child to be brought up morally right.

There is nothing shameful about Catholics and others running adoption agencies in partnership with the state in a way that reflects their moral principles.

Carr’s position allows LGBT activists to bar Catholics and others who rightly object to homosexual relations from their place in public service. As the fate of adoption agencies in Illinois shows, the pretty talk of tolerance and diversity is empty.

Carr’s Democratic rival, the openly gay State Sen. Pat Steadman, is the sponsor of Colorado’s proposed civil unions bill. But even Steadman adopted language protecting religious adoption agencies into his bill.

The sorry state of the Republican Party means that religious believers and others who reject gay political causes have few friends.

Carr himself helped put on the GOP state assembly ballot a pro-civil unions resolution that won a majority vote, but failed to reach a 2/3 supermajority necessary for adoption.

There are some bright lights in our state. Colorado’s Republican House Speaker Frank McNulty threw the legislature into a special session rather than adopt civil unions. But the Republican House majority rests on a one-vote margin and is being vigorously contested in the 2012 election.

For years, pundits and party activists have been telling social conservatives to keep quiet. The present situation is what social conservatives get for taking their advice.