He’s been marginalized and mocked — I’ve taken a cheap shot or two — but Ward Connerly is ideologically consistent, and how many conservatives can you say that about?
Ward Connerly, a former member of the University of California board of regents and one of the country’s foremost opponents of affirmative action, is one such conservative icon. Connerly, who is black and grew up in the Deep South, told me that efforts to amend his state’s constitution to ban gay marriage remind him of antimiscegenation laws. “For anyone to say that this is an issue for people who are gay and that this isn’t about civil rights is sadly mistaken,” he says. “If you really believe in freedom and limited government, to be intellectually consistent and honest you have to oppose efforts of the majority to impose their will on people.”
