Robert Maranto is the 21st Century Chair in Leadership in the Department of Education Reform at the University of Arkansas; rmaranto@uark.edu. Maranto edits the Journal of School Choice, serves on his local school board, and with others authored or edited fourteen books, including the late Stanley Rothman’s The End of the Experiment (Transaction, 2016).
At an academic conference in 1998, I dined with several delightful social scientists who boasted that in a group called Common Ground, they had bravely conversed with some exotic and possibly dangerous people: Republican voting conservatives. Among other things, the professors took pride in convincing conservatives to support gay and lesbian domestic partnership legislation, more than a decade before same sex marriage became widespread.
“That’s great,” I affirmed. “I’ve supported gay and lesbian marriage since the 1970s. So what have they convinced you of?”
Awkward
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