How did Meghan McCain become the de-facto mouthpiece for the young Republican party, conservative movement, or anything at all? Oh, that’s right, her octogenarian father ran an ill-fated, right-of-center, reach-out-to-minorities-at-all-costs campaign for President — which he then lost to a wet-behind-the-ears junior Senator with no resume and Hussein for a middle name. And young Meghan was there to experience every flash-bulb and balloon-drop, transforming into an attractive-enough-to-get-on-FOX-pseudo-celebrity in the process. I get it now. Proximity equals authority.

Well, no matter how she got access to a microphone, this time Meghan McCain and her multiple chins got it wrong.

Miss McCain is delighted to announce that she will address the Log Cabin Republicans this week. (I don’t quite understand the organizations choice in speakers, perhaps Heidi Montag was unavailable, but at least they’ll be able to compare accessories!) The young political starlet is using the platform as an excuse to speak out against the anti-gay sentiment of the current Republican Party and Conservative movement (as if the two are one in the same.) She claims that it is high time for both to shed the anti-gay mantra that has been hanging about our necks like a rainbow-hued mill-stone for so many years and embrace gay marriage as an individual choice and right defended by our own hallowed Declaration of Independence and championed by (her words not mine) the “ultimate Republican rock star” Ronald W. Reagan. (Hmm, the Gipper did play cowboys during his days in Hollywood, but I’m pretty sure none of them were the Brokeback variety.)

First things first, it is high time for the Republican Party to start taking it’s cues from the Conservative movement — not the other way around. It was the very practice of big-tent Republicanism that dear Meghan espouses as our way out of the wilderness that brought us President Obama and a Democratically controlled Congress. The American people don’t know what the Republican Party stands for anymore and, frankly, neither do many Republicans. I refuse to join the ranks of the GOP for that very reason. The inmates have been running the asylum for too long now and Miss McCain seems to be fine with continuing the practice, so long as the boys who want to share their bunk-beds with other boys are afforded an equal place in the cuckoo’s nest.

This “changing the party/movement to fit the times” mentality is part-and-parcel with the ideology that says the Constitution is a “living document” that must be changed/interpreted in accord with current social and political trends. Nothing is farther from the truth, yet Miss McCain and current GOP leadership seem to believe that we need to water down our message and, in doing so, reach out to those who normally wouldn’t share our ideology; such as gay Americans.

Obviously there are homosexuals who believe in the same things we do, being gay is not a disqualifier for Conservatism, and there are many gays who share our love of individual liberty, private property, a Constitutionally-bound government and shared tradition. But where the issue of marriage is concerned, Miss McCain could not be more incorrect when she paints it as an individual right guaranteed to all citizens by our founding documents and the approval of popular leaders like Reagan or, lesser-so, Hutchinson.

It is possible to believe in, and defend, individual liberty and self-determination while disagreeing with the idea of extending the rights and rewards of marriage to the gay community. Marriage is not an inherent right of man and is not guaranteed by any of our founding documents to the citizenry. In fact, the inclusion of the guarantee to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” found in the Declaration seems to run counter to any description of marriage I’ve ever heard. (Maybe that’s why Rush and Ann are still single, hmmm.)

If marriage were, in fact, a Constitutionally recognized and protected right, then sexual orientation should not be used as a impediment to that right anymore than sex, race or religion. But it isn’t. And until there is either a federal amendment adopted or a Supreme Court decision stating otherwise, both of which I reject, the argument is moot.

Marriage is a religious insitution entered into before God that the government got involved in after-the-fact; first in order to provide incentives for producing children and furthering the civilization, then as a means to regulate the family and collect revenue. Now it is being painted by right and left alike as the civil rights struggle of our time, or at least that’s what the sequined lame’ sign I saw recently said.

Bottom-line, the GOP will not gain ground by diluting its principles. We do not need to extend a new, mythical right to the gay commuinity, or any minority community, to attract them to our ranks. We will only do so by returning to the principles of our founding and reinforcing them through the open communication of a Conservative, pro-liberty message.

Meghan, you’re a lot better looking than your dad and I’m sure your gay friends are wonderful people, but before you start reinventing the GOP and Conservatism is your image, re-read Goldwater and do a few crunches.