Arizona Senate Candidate Blake Masters’ Views on Gay Marriage May Surprise His Political Master Peter Thiel

Republican senatorial candidate Blake Masters enjoys the financial and political support of longtime friend, mentor and billionaire business partner Peter Thiel, who is gay. But Masters, who attended Thiel’s wedding, also believes Thiel’s marriage was illegitimate.

“It’s not just Disney, you know — ‘follow your heart,'” Masters said at an advocacy event earlier this year. “It has a point.”

That “point,” he said, is to create children. And since there is no procreation in same-sex marriages, Masters explains, such unions are pointless — and therefore should be banned.

Masters, 34, shared this view in February with an audience member at a Republican Women’s Club event in San Tan Valley, Arizona, where he is running for the Senate. He told the group that in 2015, the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage had “crossed eyes and created so-called constitutional rights”.

“The Supreme Court should not decide on same-sex marriage. If this country wants to legalize same-sex marriage or recognize it, what you will do is you will get an amendment to the Constitution. It is considered difficult. It’s supposed to be hard for a reason,” he said. “Honestly, the Supreme Court is just looking at and giving the so-called Constitutional rights — the right to privacy for abortion, the right to same-sex marriage — I don’t agree with that.”

Masters then pivots to Thiel’s wedding as a real-world example, saying “I wish him well,” while the next breath declares that Thiel’s marriage is against the law.

“I, you know, my former boss and mentor Peter Thiel are gay. I went to his wedding like, you know, I–great, I wish him well. I don’t think the Supreme Court should have decided that case that way,” Masters said. He added that while he doesn’t think same-sex marriage is “a direct issue right now,” he believes “marriage is between a man and a woman.”

While same-sex marriage may not have been a “direct issue” at the time of the event, it certainly evolved into a three-month later, when the public there is a preview Among what last week became the key decision of the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

That controversial ruling hung over a matter of due process, and the court ultimately returned the decision to the individual states. But Roe not the only precedent set on those grounds; other major decisions with a similar legal structure, including Obergefell v. Hodgescase of guaranteeing the marriage rights of same-sex people.

The impact was not lost on the court. The court’s three liberal justices — Elena Kagan, Stephen Breyer, and Sonia Sotomayor — warned in their dissent that Obergefell could be next, along with protections for contraception and sexual activity in general.

While the majority of SCOTUS conservatives oppose those concerns, Justice Clarence Thomas made it clear in idea that the Court “should reconsider” all similar procedural precedents, calling for Obergefell out by name.

Masters also named the case, saying that although he had “a lot of problems” with Chief Justice John Roberts, he matched Roberts’ “pretty good dissent.”

That’s because marriage, Masters said, “makes sense.”

“Marriage is an institution that dates back thousands of years, and it has a reason. The point is to reproduce and produce offspring,” Masters said.

Thiel’s marriage, from Masters’ point of view, seemed pointless.

It’s unclear how this squares with the “fantastic” wedding Masters attended between Thiel and his current husband, Matt Danzeisen.

Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook, was arrested after ObergefellAlthough the couple has not held a wedding ceremony in the US for a long time. Instead, they invited guests to Vienna, Austria, as part of the venture capitalist’s 50th birthday celebration, and surprise them with the wedding. (Location doesn’t matter; there are no loopholes abroad when it comes to federal rights extended in Obergefell.)

At the time, Masters was the CFO of Thiel Capital Management, making him a colleague not only of Thiel but also of Danzeisen, who had worked there as a portfolio manager. Thiel brought the Masters under his leadership a decade ago, and last year poured $10 million into supporting the candidacy of his protégé — who regularly plugged into the boss’s technology at that time on the trail of the campaign.

Ultimate Master resign from Thiel Capital this spring amid ethical concerns. He scored the endorsement of former President Donald Trump earlier this month.

But even with Trump’s resignation, LGBTQ rights are under attack from conservatives around the country. With Democrats controlling the federal executive and legislative branches, this action has been limited to the state level — something Masters wants to change.

So far this year, more than 250 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in 37 states, according to follow the law organized by Freedom For All American and the Human Rights Campaign.

Anti-transgender extremism has Climb the ladder to the extent that the parents of transgender children fear for their safety and the resurgence of archaic homophobic rhetoric around “peddlers” and pedophiles – fueled by Republican Party Leaders and conservative media-yes anxiety stirs in the LGBTQ community about politically motivated violence.

Days before Roe’s decision was made, the Texas Republican Party deployed a radically conservative politics communicationdenounced same-sex marriage as a violation of the “natural order” and vowed to “protect” minors from Drag Queen’s “predatory” Storytime.

In November, GOP leaders poked fun at Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel for expressing support for gay Republicans at a Mar-a-Lago gala — even call for her to resign.

Critics say these developments, like the Masters comment, show Republicans are going back in time. When it comes to same-sex marriage, however, the GOP’s clock was stuck in 2016, when the official party platform defined “natural marriage” as between “one man and one woman”.

Because GOP refuse to write a new platform in 2020, current platformwill do so at least through the 2024 election, the same as the 2016 election — next year Obergefell.

The real libertarian Thiel spoke at the 2016 convention just minutes before Trump took the stage, declare“I’m proud to be gay.”

“We’ve been told that the big debate is about who gets to use which bathroom,” said Thiel, referring to the controversy over new anti-transgender laws enacted in conservative states.

“This is a distraction from our real problems,” he said. “Who cares?”