The New York Times > Washington > G.O.P. Consultant Weds His Male Partner By ADAM NAGOURNEY

Arthur J. Finkelstein, a prominent Republican consultant who has directed a series of hard-edged political campaigns to elect conservatives in the United States and Israel over the last 25 years, said Friday that he had married his male partner in a civil ceremony at his home in Massachusetts.

Mr. Finkelstein, 59, who has made a practice of defeating Democrats by trying to demonize them as liberal, said in a brief interview that he had married his partner of 40 years to ensure that the couple had the same benefits available to married heterosexual couples.

“I believe that visitation rights, health care benefits and other human relationship contracts that are taken for granted by all married people should be available to partners,” he said. …

Mr. Finkelstein has regularly described himself as a libertarian who supports same-sex marriage and abortion rights while opposing big government. In an interview with Maariv, an Israeli newspaper, after the American elections last year, he criticized the Republican Party as growing too close to evangelical Christians, warning it could cause long-term damage to the party. …

Mr. Finkelstein live[s] with his partner and two children….

[S]ome conservative friends said Mr. Finkelstein’s marriage would roil conservatives and highlight divisions among them over the importance of social issues to their movement.

“In recent years, Arthur hasn’t pretended to be a social conservative,” said one longtime conservative associate, who cited Mr. Finkelstein’s aversion to publicity in declining to be identified. “But this is the same man who was the architect of Jesse Helms’s political rise.”

I’m not outing Finkelstein. I’m not even calling him a complete hypocrite. I’m highlighting this story to underscore my confusion over what “conservatives” want and what they are willing to do to get it. Like work closely with people who wish they were dead.

Note: they’ve been a couple for 40 years (since 1965!). How many conservatives have gotten multiple divorces in that time? mjh

[via dangerousmeta!]