Portman And Empathy

by Stuart Shapiro

First, let me say I am very happy that Senator Rob Portman has come out (pun intended) in favor of gay marriage.  However, we should all be a bit disturbed about how he reached this decision.  It was only when the issue affected someone close to him that he was able to understand the argument in favor of gay marriage.  Matthew Yglesias puts it best:

The great challenge for a senator isn’t to go to Washington and represent the problems of his own family. It’s to try to obtain the intellectual and moral perspective necessary to represent the problems of the people who don’t have direct access to the corridors of power. Senators basically never have poor kids. That’s something members of Congress should think about. Especially members of Congress who know personally that realizing an issue affects their own children changes their thinking.

Let’s see if Senator Portman is up to Yglesias’ challenge.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.