The Inevitability of Gay Marriage?

Well, the same-sex marriage debate's been heating up around the country. Chris Christie vetoed a gay marriage bill in New Jersey, Christine Gregoire signed same-sex marriage legislation in Washington, and the Maryland House of Delegates passed a gay marriage bill just yesterday.

I've been meaning to post on this. Last weekend, at the Los Angeles Times, Harvard Professor Michael Klarman argued that gay marriage is inevitable in the United States. Klarman makes two points: (1) that as more and more people come to know someone who is gay they are reluctant to deprive them of "rights" such as same-sex marriage and (2) that younger Americans are more tolerant of gay marriage and thus the younger demographic cohort will compose a larger, decisive share of the electorate as older, more conservative voters pass from the political scene.

The generational argument is one that's been made often in the last few years, with some proponents of gay marriage even counseling moderation in political fights since time is on the side of same-sex activists. And that may be true. My position is that gay marriage is not in fact a civil right but that if states wish to enact it then a federalist solution should be considered. (And I thought the David Blankenhorn and Jonathan Rauch compromise offered in 2009 was excellent, "A Reconciliation on Gay Marriage.")

But one of the things that bothers me even about promoting state-level votes to allow gay marriage is that the radical left gay rights lobby has worked aggressively and viciously to demonize and discredit the democratic process when it comes to same-sex rights. A small but extremely vocal minority has essentially flipped James Madison's fear of tyranny of the majority on its head: now an in-your-face totalitarian gay militia will attack, stalk, berate, threaten, and destroy opponents of same-sex marriage. In California, supporters of Proposition 8 were targeted for harassment and the progressives attacked the First Amendment rights of the Mormon Church, which had spent heavily in favor of the initiative. And when the case went to federal court, the trial became farce as the radical progressives turned the proceedings into a sham show trial. (See Michelle's report, "The anti-Prop. 8 mob strikes again.")

It's obvious that progressives are scared to death of legitimate debate on gay marriage. And after the normal moral arguments and bogus comparisons to the black civil rights struggle fail to sway voters, the left turns into a lynch mob to literally destroy the opposition. Here's the letter to the editor from reader Pat Murphy at the Los Angeles Times, in response to Professor Klarman's case for the inevitability of gay marriage:

Michael Klarman wants everyone to think there's widespread support for gay marriage. Then why have voters rejected it in every state where it has been on the ballot, including recently in Maine and twice in California?

"In the few states in which it is allowed, it was the result of backroom maneuvering — such as in Massachusetts, where the legislature won't allow its residents to vote on the issue, or California, where judicial fiat has now overturned two elections.

"Because the public won't cooperate, Klarman cites polls that suit his opinion that gay marriage is inevitable. This reflects a mind-set that shows contempt for the democratic process.

Exactly.

And in response Klarman fails back on the same tired comparisons between same-sex marriage and interracial marriage that even the majority of black voters have rejected. (See the New York Times report from earlier this week, for example, "Gay Marriage a Tough Sell with Blacks in Maryland.")

The gay marriage agenda is totalitarian. The left simply cannot tolerate differences of opinion on this issue, because time and again they've been on the losing side of the argument. The funny thing about is that in then end, the browbeating and bullying will carry the day. We may indeed see the gay marriage ayatollahs prevail since people of decency and morals don't like to be falsely attacked as "bigots" all day long, and many will simply decide that given the threats to their safety, it's just not worth it after a while. And make note of how it's not just the radical fringe who resorts to thuggery. Top Democrat Party appendages have propelled the progressive attack strategy to the front of the gay marriage push. The left's merciless attacks on Rick Santorum are are recent example. Here's this from the White House-aligned Think Progress last week, "Protesters Shout Down Santorum as He Speaks Against Marriage Equality in Washington State":

So, while it's not a pretty picture, that's likely where things stand. Unfortunately, I don't see as many conservatives really buckling down in defense of traditional marriage as is needed to carry the day. I see a lot of folks on the right just throwing up their hands in defeat, perhaps because of a libertarian bent or of a misplaced need to appear tolerant.

Gay marriage is not conservative. Folks who call themselves conservative should be manning the barricades against the left's freakish mob now raping the democracy like one more crime in the #OWS agenda. There's more on that at Soros-backed Think Progress, "Catching Up On the Current State Marriage Equality Efforts" (via Memeorandum).

The Secular Case Against Gay Marriage

Newsweek ramps-up the gay marriage debate with its cover story this week, "The Religious Case for Gay Marriage."

The piece starts with numerous examples of Biblical figures whose manners of living were diametrically opposed to what today's religious conservatives would champion as an appropriate traditional lifestyle for society: For example, "Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon and the kings of Judah and Israel—all these fathers and heroes were polygamists."

Read the essay. The problem I see is the author argues an exclusively literalist case against faith-based opposition to same-sex marriage, when in fact most Americans would more likely argue an essentialist religious foundation against gay marriage, one that sees religious tradition - rather than literal prophetic realism - as the basis for an ethics privileging heterosexual marriage.

Here's how Newsweek paints religious literalism as a straw man in favor of a more holistic religious acceptance of same-sex marriage:

As a civil institution, marriage offers practical benefits to both partners: contractual rights having to do with taxes; insurance; the care and custody of children; visitation rights; and inheritance. As a religious institution, marriage offers something else: a commitment of both partners before God to love, honor and cherish each other—in sickness and in health, for richer and poorer—in accordance with God's will. In a religious marriage, two people promise to take care of each other, profoundly, the way they believe God cares for them. Biblical literalists will disagree, but the Bible is a living document, powerful for more than 2,000 years because its truths speak to us even as we change through history. In that light, Scripture gives us no good reason why gays and lesbians should not be (civilly and religiously) married—and a number of excellent reasons why they should.

As I have argued many times here, the case for an expansive religious interpretation of a homosexual right to marry was rejected decisively at the polls this year, and Newsweek's own poll that accompanies this article found only 31 percent of Americans in favor full-blown marriage equality for gays and lesbians.

But we can leave all of that aside for the moment, since the increasing secularism in American society seems like a steamroller at times, and its proponents have no qualms of adopting Soviet-style show-trial tactics to dehumanize those who suppor the majoritarian political process.

The fact is, conservatives may have to battle gay rights advocates on the secular battlefield, as contentious cultural issues like this are essentially uncompromising for people of faith.

Susan Shell, in a masterpiece of an article, "The Liberal Case Against Gay Marriage," lays out a classical and secular liberal case against gay marriage ("liberal" is used here in the Lockean form, with a stress on "liberty of rights," not "liberal" as used to describe the American left).

The core of Shell's argument is that marriage historically is recognized as a practice that his essentially procreative and regenerative. Not all couples bear children, but the institution's social foundation is anchored in the elevation of the basic biological union of spouses, and it is protected under the law as available to only one man and one woman, as a matter of civil principle. Shell argues, for example, marriage should only be available for the regenerative union of spouses in the ideal, as funerals are in fact only available to the dead:

When considering the institution of marriage, a useful comparison exists between how society addresses the beginning and end of human life. Like death, our relation to which is shaped and challenged but not effaced by modern technologies, generation defines our human nature, both in obvious ways and in ways difficult to fathom fully. As long as this is so, there is a special place for marriage understood as it has always been understood. That is to say, there is a need for society to recognize that human generation and its claims are an irreducible feature of the human experience.

Like the rites and practices surrounding death, marriage invests a powerful, universally shared experience with the norms and purposes of a given society. Even when couples do not "marry," as is increasingly becoming the case in parts of western Europe, they still form socially recognized partnerships that constitute a kind of marriage. If marriage in a formal sense is abolished, it will not disappear, but it will no longer perform this task so well.

A similar constraint applies to death. A society could abolish "funerals" as heretofore understood and simply call them "parties," or allow individuals to define them as they wish. Were the "liberationist" exaltation of individual choice pushed to its logical conclusion, would not a public definition of "funeral" as a rite in honor of the dead appear just as invidious as a public definition of "marriage" as an enduring sexual partnership between a man and woman? If it is discriminatory to deny gay couples the right to "marry," is it not equally unfair to deny living individuals the right to attend their own "funerals"? If it makes individuals happy, some would reply, what is the harm? Only that a society without the means of formally acknowledging, through marriage, the fact of generation, like one without the means of formally acknowledging, through funeral rites, the fact of death, seems impoverished in the most basic of human terms.

Like generation, death has a "public face" so obvious that we hardly think of it. The state issues death certificates and otherwise defines death legally. It recognizes funeral attendance as a legal excuse in certain contexts, such as jury duty. It also regulates the treatment of corpses, which may not merely be disposed of like any ordinary animal waste. Many states afford funeral corteges special privileges not enjoyed by ordinary motorists. Funeral parlors are strictly regulated, and there are limits on the purchase and destruction of cemeteries that do not apply to ordinary real estate. In short, there are a number of ways in which a liberal democratic government, as a matter of course, both acknowledges "death" and limits the funereal rites and practices of particular sects and individuals. I cannot call a party in my honor my "funeral" and expect the same public respect and deference afforded genuine rites for the dead. And it would be a grim society indeed that allowed people to treat the dead any old which way--as human lampshades, for example.

Once one grants that the link between marriage and generation may approach, in its universality and solemn significance, the link between funereal practices and death, the question of gay marriage appears in a new light. It is not that marriages are necessarily devoted to the having and rearing of children, nor that infertility need be an impediment to marriage (as is still the case for some religious groups). This country has never legally insisted that the existence of marriage depends upon "consummation" in a potentially procreative act. It is, rather, that marriage, in all the diversity of its forms, draws on a model of partnership rooted in human generation. But for that fact, marriages would be indistinguishable from partnerships of a variety of kinds. The peculiar intimacy, reciprocity, and relative permanence of marriage reflect a genealogy that is more than merely historical.

Seen in this light, the issue of gay marriage can be reduced to the following question: Is the desired union between homosexuals more like a marriage between infertile heterosexuals, unions that draw ultimate psychological and moral sustenance (at least symbolically) from the experience of human generation; or is it more like insistence on attending one's own funeral--a funeral, one might say, existing in name only? This question is not easily answered. Progress can be made, however, by attending to the stated goals of most gay marriage advocates.

Someone who is living cannot attend their own funeral, and thus, according to this logic, someone who is gay cannot attend their own marriage, as marriage has been historically constituted heterosexually in law and culture.

But Shell adds another paragraph indicating the likely backlash militant homosexuals will engender through their hardcore gay marriage advocacy:

American citizens should not have the sectarian beliefs of gay-marriage advocates imposed on them unwillingly. If proponents of gay marriage seek certain privileges of marriage, such as legal support for mutual aid and childbearing, there may well be no liberal reason to deny it to them. But if they also seek positive public celebration of homosexuality as such, then that desire must be disappointed. The requirement that homosexual attachments be publicly recognized as no different from, and equally necessary to society as, heterosexual attachments is a fundamentally illiberal demand. Gays cannot be guaranteed all of the experiences open to heterosexuals any more than tall people can be guaranteed all of the experiences open to short people. Least of all can gays be guaranteed all of the experiences that stem from the facts of human sexual reproduction and its accompanying penumbra of pleasures and cares. To insist otherwise is not only psychologically and culturally implausible; it imposes a sectarian moral view on fellow citizens who disagree and who may hold moral beliefs that are diametrically opposed to it.

Keep in mind that Shell argues this point with the acknowlegment that political libertarianism would accord homosexuals the same rights that accrue to traditional couples, such as adoption. And as we saw in the Newsweek survey, on every other gay rights issues outside of marriage equality majorities of Americans are tolerant and expansive in affording full inclusion for same-sex partners.

But the current militant authoritarianism for same-sex marriage rights - which we've seen demonstrated with nauseating clarity in the No on H8 attacks following the passage of California's Yes on 8 initiative - will almost certainly generate the kind of backlash against gay marriage equality that Shell envisions.

So, while there may indeed by a growing generation tolerance for full-blown same-sex marriage equality, the logical extension of full public affirmation of such marriage rights may well create the the kind of reaction capable of setting back the clock on gay rights altogether.

The Same-Sex Marriage Bait-and-Switch

From Jonathan Last, at the Weekly Standard, "You Will Be Assimilated":

You may recall Brendan Eich. The cofounder and CEO of Mozilla was dismissed from his company in 2014 when it was discovered that, six years earlier, he had donated $1,000 to California’s Proposition 8 campaign. That ballot initiative, limiting marriage to one man and one woman, passed with a larger percentage of the vote in California than Barack Obama received nationally in 2012. No one who knew Eich accused him of treating his gay coworkers badly—by all accounts he was kind and generous to his colleagues. Nonetheless, having provided modest financial support to a lawful ballot initiative that passed with a majority vote was deemed horrible enough to deprive Eich of his livelihood. Which is one thing.

What is quite another is the manner in which Eich has been treated since. A year after Eich’s firing, for instance, Hampton Catlin, a Silicon Valley programmer who was one of the first to demand Eich’s resignation, took to Twitter to bait Eich:

Hampton ‏@hcatlin Apr 2

It had been a couple weeks since I’d gotten some sort of @BrendanEich related hate mail. How things going over there on your side, Brendan?

BrendanEich ‏@BrendanEich

@hcatlin You demanded I be “completely removed from any day to day activities at Mozilla” & got your wish. I’m still unemployed. How’re you?

Hampton ‏@hcatlin Apr 2

@BrendanEich married and able to live in the USA! .  .  . and working together on open source stuff! In like, a loving, happy gay married way!

It’s a small thing, to be sure. But telling. Because it shows that the same-sex marriage movement is interested in a great deal more than just the freedom to form marital unions. It is also interested, quite keenly, in punishing dissenters. But the ambitions of the movement go further than that, even. It’s about revisiting legal notions of freedom of speech and association, constitutional protections for religious freedom, and cultural norms concerning the family. And most Americans are only just realizing that these are the societal compacts that have been pried open for negotiation.

Same-sex marriage supporters see this cascade of changes as necessary for safeguarding progress against retrograde elements in society. People less deeply invested in same-sex marriage might see it as a bait-and-switch. And they would be correct. But this is hardly new. Bait-and-switch has been the modus operandi of the gay rights movement not, perhaps, from the start, but for a good long while.

It began at the most elementary factual level: How many Americans are gay? For decades, gay-rights activists pushed the line that 1 out of every 10 people is homosexual. This statistic belied all evidence but was necessary in order to imbue the cause with a sense of ubiquity and urgency. The public fell so hard for this propaganda that in 2012 Gallup did a poll asking people what percentage of the country they thought was gay. The responses were amazing. Women and young adults were the most gullible, saying, on average, that they thought 30 percent of the population was gay. The average American thought that 24 percent of the population—one quarter—was gay. Only 4 percent of respondents said they thought homosexuals made up less than 5 percent of the population.

But even 5 percent turns out to be an exaggeration. The best research to date on American sexual preference is a 2014 study from the Centers for Disease Control with a monster sample of 34,557 adults. It found that 96.6 percent of Americans identified as heterosexual, 1.6 percent identified as gay or lesbian, and 0.7 percent as bisexual. The percentage of gays and lesbians isn’t much higher than the percentage of folks who refused to answer the question (1.1 percent).

Then there’s the matter of the roots of homosexuality. Important to the narrative behind the same-sex marriage movement has been the insistence that sexual orientation is genetically determined and not a choice. But now that same-sex marriage is a reality, some activists are admitting that this view might not, strictly speaking, be true. For instance, in the avant-garde webzine n+1, Alexander Borinsky argued that sexuality is a characteristic to be actively constructed by the self. He was making a philosophical argument from the safety of gay marriage’s now-dominant position. Others were less philosophical and more practical. Here, for instance, is how the dancer and writer Brandon Ambrosino tackled the subject in the New Republic in January 2014:

[I]t’s time for the LGBT community to start moving beyond genetic predisposition as a tool for gaining mainstream acceptance of gay rights. .  .  .

For decades now, it’s been the most powerful argument in the LGBT arsenal: that we were “born this way.” .  .  .Still, as compelling as these arguments are, they may have outgrown their usefulness. With most Americans now in favor of gay marriage, it’s time for the argument to shift to one where genetics don’t matter. The genetic argument has boxed us into a corner.

It’s always a little unsettling when a movement that claims the mantle of truth, liberty, and equality starts openly admitting its arguments are mere “tools” to be wielded for their “usefulness.” But that’s where the movement is these days. Remember when proponents of same-sex marriage mocked people who suggested that creating a right to same-sex “marriage” might weaken the institution of marriage itself: How could my gay marriage possibly affect your straight marriage? Those arguments have outlived their usefulness, too. Here’s gay activist Jay Michaelson last year in the Daily Beast:

Moderates and liberals have argued that same-sex marriage is No Big Deal—it’s the Same Love, after all, and gays just want the same lives as everyone else. But further right and further left, things get a lot more interesting. What if gay marriage really will change the institution of marriage, shifting conceptions around monogamy and intimacy? . . .

[T]here is some truth to the conservative claim that gay marriage is changing, not just expanding, marriage. According to a 2013 study, about half of gay marriages surveyed (admittedly, the study was conducted in San Francisco) were not strictly monogamous.

This fact is well-known in the gay community—indeed, we assume it’s more like three-quarters. But it’s been fascinating to see how my straight friends react to it. Some feel they’ve been duped: They were fighting for marriage equality, not marriage redefinition. Others feel downright envious, as if gays are getting a better deal, one that wouldn’t work for straight couples. . . .

What would happen if gay non-monogamy—and I’ll include writer Dan Savage’s “monogamish” model, which involves extramarital sex once a year or so—actually starts to spread to straight people? Would open marriages, ’70s swinger parties, and perhaps even another era’s “arrangements” and “understandings” become more prevalent? Is non-monogamy one of the things same-sex marriage can teach straight ones, along with egalitarian chores and matching towel sets?

And what about those post-racial and post-gender millennials? What happens when a queer-identified, mostly-heterosexual woman with plenty of LGBT friends gets married? Do we really think that because she is “from Venus,” she will be interested in a heteronormative, sex-negative, patriarchal system of partnership? . . .

Radicals point out that gay liberation in the 1970s was, as the name implies, a liberation movement. It was about being free, questioning authority, rebellion. “2-4-6-8, smash the church and smash the state,” people shouted.

Slate’s Hanna Rosin agrees, suggesting that gay marriage won’t just change “normal” marriage, but will do so for the good:

The dirty little secret about gay marriage: Most gay couples are not monogamous. We have come to accept lately, partly thanks to Liza Mundy’s excellent recent cover story in the Atlantic and partly because we desperately need something to make the drooping institution of heterosexual marriage seem vibrant again, that gay marriage has something to teach us, that gay couples provide a model for marriages that are more egalitarian and less burdened by the old gender roles that are weighing marriage down these days.

Of course, not everyone in the same-sex marriage movement wants to help traditional marriage evolve into something better. Some want to burn it to the ground. Again in the New Republic, for instance, one member of a married lesbian couple wrote about her quest to use her own brother’s sperm to impregnate her wife. Why would she seek to do such a thing? Because “The queer parts of me relished the way it unsettled people. Uprooting convention, collapsing categories, reframing and reassigning blood relations was a subversive wet dream.” This is quite intentionally not, as Andrew Sullivan once promised, a “virtually normal” view of marriage.

Other changes are coming...

I'm sure they are.

No surprise to me, of course. I warned about many of these developments over the years since Prop. 8. The hate campaign against dissenters is the least surprising of all. It's been a constant in the news for years now. What's next is the continued marginalization of religion from the public square, and the further evisceration of robust public morality.

Keep reading, in any case.

Again, more specific expectations going forward depend on what happens at the Supreme Court in the coming days. Once we find out how the Court rules, we'll have a better sense of the coming arc of the homosexual agenda. That, and the virtually inevitable majority backlash against same-sex licentiousness and immorality. As I always say, social issues are not settled. Support for homosexual marriage in public opinion has probably peaked. Aggressive hate campaign by the left will drive public opinion back down. This is the worst outcome for the radical left's homosexual activists and SJWs, and they'll do anything to prevent the emergence of a traditional marriage movement rivaling the pro-life movement (and all its successes). This includes destroying lives with complete impunity and even using political violence against dissenters.

America's in for a long cultural war, with thanks to the left's ideological demons of hate and perversity.

Plural Marriage is Waiting in the Wings

Flashback.

Stanley Kurtz, from 2005:

ON SEPTEMBER 23, 2005, the 46-year-old Victor de Bruijn and his 31-year-old wife of eight years, Bianca, presented themselves to a notary public in the small Dutch border town of Roosendaal. And they brought a friend. Dressed in wedding clothes, Victor and Bianca de Bruijn were formally united with a bridally bedecked Mirjam Geven, a recently divorced 35-year-old whom they'd met several years previously through an Internet chatroom. As the notary validated a samenlevingscontract, or "cohabitation contract," the three exchanged rings, held a wedding feast, and departed for their honeymoon.

When Mirjam Geven first met Victor and Bianca de Bruijn, she was married. Yet after several meetings between Mirjam, her then-husband, and the De Bruijns, Mirjam left her spouse and moved in with Victor and Bianca. The threesome bought a bigger bed, while Mirjam and her husband divorced. Although neither Mirjam nor Bianca had had a prior relationship with a woman, each had believed for years that she was bisexual. Victor, who describes himself as "100 percent heterosexual," attributes the trio's success to his wives' bisexuality, which he says has the effect of preventing jealousy.

The De Bruijns' triple union caused a sensation in the Netherlands, drawing coverage from television, radio, and the press. With TV cameras and reporters crowding in, the wedding celebration turned into something of a media circus. Halfway through the festivities, the trio had to appoint one of their guests as a press liaison. The local paper ran several stories on the triple marriage, one devoted entirely to the media madhouse.

News of the Dutch three-way wedding filtered into the United States through a September 26 report by Paul Belien, on his Brussels Journal website. The story spread through the conservative side of the Internet like wildfire, raising a chorus of "I told you so's" from bloggers who'd long warned of a slippery slope from gay marriage to polygamy.

Meanwhile, gay marriage advocates scrambled to put out the fire. M.V. Lee Badgett, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and research director of the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies, told a sympathetic website, "This [Brussels Journal] article is ridiculous. Don't be fooled--Dutch law does not allow polygamy." Badgett suggested that Paul Belien had deliberately mistranslated the Dutch word for "cohabitation contract" as "civil union," or even "marriage," so as to leave the false impression that the triple union had more legal weight than it did. Prominent gay-marriage advocate Evan Wolfson, executive director of Freedom to Marry, offered up a detailed legal account of Dutch cohabitation contracts, treating them as a matter of minor significance, in no way comparable to state-recognized registered partnerships.

In short, while the Dutch triple wedding set the conservative blogosphere ablaze with warnings, same-sex marriage advocates dismissed the story as a silly stunt with absolutely no implications for the gay marriage debate. And how did America's mainstream media adjudicate the radically different responses of same-sex marriage advocates and opponents to events in the Netherlands? By ignoring the entire affair.

Yet there is a story here. And it's bigger than even those chortling conservative websites claim. While Victor, Bianca, and Mirjam are joined by a private cohabitation contract rather than a state-registered partnership or a full-fledged marriage, their union has already made serious legal, political, and cultural waves in the Netherlands. To observers on both sides of the Dutch gay marriage debate, the De Bruijns' triple wedding is an unmistakable step down the road to legalized group marriage.

More important, the De Bruijn wedding reveals a heretofore hidden dimension of the gay marriage phenomenon. The De Bruijns' triple marriage is a bisexual marriage. And, increasingly, bisexuality is emerging as a reason why legalized gay marriage is likely to result in legalized group marriage. If every sexual orientation has a right to construct its own form of marriage, then more changes are surely due. For what gay marriage is to homosexuality, group marriage is to bisexuality. The De Bruijn trio is the tip-off to the fact that a connection between bisexuality and the drive for multipartner marriage has been developing for some time.

Photo Credit: "The Polygamists - FLDS: An exclusive look inside the FLDS."

And from the comments at Christianity Today:

Big deal. Sticking a reproductive organ into an excretory canal will never constitute grounds for biblical marriage. Also, it's not over, yet. This will be appealed to the SC where it will be a 5 to 4 decision against homosexual marriage. If not, there is no logical reason to prevent plural marriage or any other arrangement. This federal judge must be a crackhead.

RELATED: From Dale Carpenter, "A Maximalist Decision, Raising the Stakes" (via Memeorandum).

Iowa Gay Marriage Ruling Makes End-Run Around State's Voters

I'm looking at the reactions on the left to the ruling from the Iowa Supreme Court allowing gay couples to marry, "Unanimous ruling: Iowa marriage no longer limited to one man, one woman."

So, it's a great day for civil rights? Not exactly:

“Iowa loses,” said Republican Sen. David Johnson of Ocheyedan. “There have been attempts in the past few years to allow Iowans to weigh in on this issue through our constitutional amendment process and it’s been blocked by majority party leadership. That’s why Iowa loses.”

One might think Iowa's leadership would let voters decide the issue at the polls, providing an up or down vote on such a controversial policy.

In a new poll from the University of Iowa, just over a quarter of respondents backed full gay marriage rights:

The random statewide telephone poll of 978 registered voters found that 36.7 percent of Iowans oppose recognition of gay marriage and civil unions. Overall, 26.2 percent of respondents support gay marriage and 27.9 percent oppose gay marriage but support civil unions. The poll was conducted March 23 through March 31. The margin of error is +/-3.1 percent for the full sample.

These findings are similar to Newsweek's survey from last December that found just 31 percent of those polled nationwide supporting a full-blown right to same-sex marriage. Americans are accepting of civil protections for legal same-sex unions. However, they continue to respect the institution of marriage as exclusive to that of one man and one woman.

But what will happen is that gay rights activists will spin the Iowa court ruling as signaling the inevitability of same-sex marriage accross the country? Ben Smith notes this about the language of the court's holding:

It's really a sweeping, total win for the gay-rights side, rejecting any claim that objections to same-sex marriage can be seen as "rational," rejecting a parallel civil union remedy, and pronouncing same-sex marriages and gay and lesbian couples essentially normal.

So, as Andre Agassi used to say, "Image Is Everything."

Gird your loins, conservatives!

**********

UPDATE: Robert Stacy McCain, in "Iowa gay ruling: Power to the elites!", offers an informed response to Andrew Sullivan's gay marriage nihilism:

Andrew Sullivan is as free to marry a woman as I am, and I am prohibited (at least by the laws of my state) from marrying a man just as Sullivan is. We are, therefore, fully equal under the law, the only difference being that he desires to be married to a man and I do not. His desire for legal endorsement of his preference is thwarted, although his civil liberty is uninfringed.

Sullivan may own property, execute contracts, serve on juries, vote, drive, own firearms, etc., the same as anyone. Yet he makes a great show of his martyrdom to homophobia, so as to elicit pity, to qualify for the victim status that is so coveted in contemporary culture. And if you call bullshit on his histrionic display, you are a bigoted homophobe (since Sully arrogates to himself the power to decide who is or is not a homophobe).

Also, here's Ed Whelan at The Corner:

The lawless judicial attack on traditional marriage and on representative government continues. Today the Iowa supreme court ruled unanimously (7-0) that a “state statute limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution.” Amidst the opinion’s 69 pages of blather, there are two key assertions (and they’re nothing more than that):

(1) “[E]qual protection can only be defined by the standards of each generation.” (p. 16)

There's more at the link. John McCormack links to Whelan as well, "Iowa Court Imposes Same-Sex Marriage."

And, via Ben Smith:

Western Iowa Rep. Steve King:

This is an unconstitutional ruling and another example of activist judges molding the Constitution to achieve their personal political ends. Iowa law says that marriage is between one man and one woman. If judges believe the Iowa legislature should grant same sex marriage, they should resign from their positions and run for office, not legislate from the bench.

Now it is the Iowa legislature’s responsibility to pass the Marriage Amendment to the Iowa Constitution, clarifying that marriage is between one man and one woman, to give the power that the Supreme Court has arrogated to itself back to the people of Iowa. Along with a constitutional amendment, the legislature must also enact marriage license residency requirements so that Iowa does not become the gay marriage Mecca due to the Supreme Court’s latest experiment in social engineering.

Doctors for the Family 'Risk to Kids' Statement on Gay Marriage Roils Australian Politics

Okay, here's bringing you a comparative and international perspective on the radical left's gay marriage agenda.

See the report at The Australian, "Gay unions a 'risk to kids', claims Victoria's deputy chief psychiatrist":

ONE of Australia's leading psychiatrists has joined forces with 150 doctors lobbying the Federal Government to ban same-sex marriage.

Professor Kuravilla George, who is Victoria's deputy chief psychiatrist and the State Government's equal opportunities champion, claims that gay marriage poses a health risk to society.

In a letter to the Senate's inquiry into marriage equality, the group of doctors wrote that it was "important for the future health of our nation" to retain the definition of marriage as being between a man and woman.

"We submit the evidence is clear that children who grow up in a family with a mother and father do better in all parameters than children without," they wrote.

News of the letter, revealed in today's Sunday Herald Sun, follows Attorney-General Nicola Roxon's announcement yesterday that she would vote for gay marriage when the chance came later this year.

Ms Roxon was speaking as thousands of Australians held protest marches across the country calling on Ms Gillard to change her stance after US President Barack Obama said that same sex couples should be able to wed.

Australia passed an amendment to its laws in 2004 explicitly defining marriage as between a man and woman, but there are several bills before the parliament calling for the right to be extended to same-sex couples.

Also at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, "Doctors' group says heterosexual marriage better for kids."

But here's gay radical Jeremy Sear at Crikey, "Herald Sun falsely implies that “doctors” think gay marriage “a risk to kids”":

Any unprotected sexual behaviour comes with the risk of HIV and syphilis, not just homosexuality. What’s wrong with homosexual behaviour being treated as normal? On what basis do they claim it isn’t and shouldn’t be? And as for the headline assertion that kids grow up better in families “with a mother and father” – unless Prof George has commissioned a brand-new study which genuinely would be actual news ( which the Herald Sun doesn’t claim that he has), then that long-discredited claim will without doubt be based on old studies comparing two parent families with one parent families, rather than comparing the the kids of homosexual parents with the kids of heterosexual parents. (You’ll note how George and his mates fudge the claim a little so it implies the latter but is sort of within the ambit of the former. That’s the level of honesty you get from anti-equality advocates.)

Sear's Twitter feed is here.

RELATED: At the Sydney Morning Herald, "Push for Gillard to review gay marriage":

ARGENTINA'S President Cristina Kirchner will write to Prime Minister Julia Gillard to encourage her to support same-sex marriage, after an Australian pair became the first foreign same-sex couple to marry in the South American country.

Prominent same-sex marriage campaigner Alex Greenwich, the national convener of Australian Marriage Equality, married his long-term partner Victor Hoeld in a ceremony in Buenos Aires on the weekend. Same-sex marriage has been legal in Argentina, where more than 90 per cent of citizens identify as Catholic, since July 2010.

Mr Greenwich, of Sydney, was jubilant yesterday about his wedding, but expressed regret that he had needed to leave Australia to marry.

''Our wedding has been the happiest day of my life, and I will return to Australia more energised than ever before to achieve marriage equality,'' he said.

''As special as our wedding was, it is a shame that we had to travel to a foreign country that affords us more rights than the country we live in and love.''

Until recently, Buenos Aires limited marriage to residents of Argentina. But this requirement was dropped after Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young wrote to Buenos Aires mayor Mauricio Macri, asking him to make an exception on ''compassionate grounds'' for couples from countries that do not allow same-sex marriage.

Ms Gillard and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott, who both oppose same-sex marriage, were last week accused of being out of step with their international counterparts after US President Barack Obama endorsed gay marriage and New Zealand Prime Minister John Key said he did not oppose it. British Prime Minister David Cameron has previously expressed support for same-sex marriage, and same-sex marriage has been legal in Canada since 2005.

Quite the globalized campaign, you think?

Polling on Gay Marriage

Nate Silver has done a sophisticated analysis of polling trends on gay marriage, "Fact and Fiction on Gay Marriage Polling." He concludes that:

Support for gay marriage ... is strongly generational ... Civil unions have already achieved the support of an outright majority of Americans, and as those older voters are replaced by younger ones, the smart money is that gay marriage will reach majority status too at some point in the 2010's.

Not so fast, actually.

Note this methodological note from Silver's plotted-data of PollingReport surveys:

This chart includes all surveys in the PollingReport.com database, except those where the respondent was given a three-pronged choice between gay marriage, civil unions and nothing.

This is problematic. Recent surveys, from Iowa Iowa and nationally, have queried support for gay marriage outside of this binary formulation (gay marriage/civil unions). Here's Newsweek's key question item, with only 31 percent favor full same-sex marriage rights:

Thinking again about legal rights for gay and lesbian couples, which of the following comes CLOSEST to your position on this issue? Do you support FULL marriage rights for same-sex couples, OR support civil unions or partnerships for same-sex couples, BUT NOT full marriage rights, OR do you oppose ANY legal recognition for same-sex couples?

Now, while there is evidence for the notion that the liberal youth cohort will replace older voters less tolerant of gay marriage (see, for example, "Explaining the Growing Support for Gay and Lesbian Equality Since 1990"), the nature of question wording, as well as the environmental political influences (gay rights protest extremism, activist political mobilization strategies, and so forth), will determine the levels of support for same-sex marriage in the years ahead. With these facts in mind, it seems a bit premature to suggest, as does Silver, "that gay marriage will reach majority status" in just a few years.

The Gay Marriage Fantasy

It turns out there's some backlash on the secular left in response to the National Organization for Marriage's new ad compaign, "The Gathering Storm."

The Human Rights Campaign, a radical gay rights pressure group, has launched a counter-offensive, attacking "The Gathering Storm" as "lies about marriage for lesbian and gay couples." The Human Rights Campaign has released a video allegedly countering the claims of the National Organization for Marriage, which is available here.

The National Organization for Marriage can defend their own advertisment, but when the actors in the video suggest that advocates for same-sex marriage "want to change the way I live," there's no question as to that statement's accuracy. Indeed, as William Murchison demonstrates at Real Clear Politics, the gathering storm of gay marriage radicalism seeks indeed to hijack the very identity of traditional American culture, abducting it for themselves in a campaign of vile licentiousness and excoriation of those of moral faith and values:

You really can't have "gay marriage," you know, irrespective of what a court or a legislature may say.

You can have something some people call gay marriage because to them the idea sounds worthy and necessary, but to say a thing is other than it is, is to stand reality on its head, hoping to shake out its pockets.

Such is the supposed effect of the Iowa Supreme Court's declaration last week that gays and heterosexuals enjoy equal rights to marital bliss. Nope. They don't and won't, even if liberal Vermont follows Iowa's lead.

The human race -- sorry ladies, sorry gents -- understands marriage as a compact reinforcing social survival and projection. It has always been so. It will always be so, even if every state Supreme Court pretended to declare that what isn't suddenly is. Life does not work in this manner.

The supposed redefinition of the Great Institution is an outgrowth of modern hubris and disjointed individualism. "What I say goes!" has become our national philosophy since the 1960s. One appreciates the First Amendment right to make such a claim. Nonetheless, no such boast actually binds unless it corresponds with the way things are at the deepest level, human as well as divine. Surface things can change. Not the deep things, among them human existence.

A marriage -- a real one -- brings together man and woman for mutual society and comfort, but also, more deeply, for the long generational journey to the future. Marriage, as historically defined, across all religious and non-religious demarcations, is about children -- which is why a marriage in which the couple deliberately repudiates childbearing is so odd a thing, to put the matter as generously as possible.

A gay "marriage" (never mind whether or not the couple tries to adopt) is definitionally sterile -- barren for the purpose of extending the generations for purposes vaster than any two people, (including people of opposite sexes), can envision.

Current legal prohibitions pertaining to something called "gay marriage" don't address the condition called homosexuality or lesbianism. A lesbian or homosexual couple is free to do pretty much as they like, so long as it doesn't "like" too much the notion of remaking other, older ideas about institutions made, conspicuously, for others. Marriage, for instance.

True, marriage isn't the only way to get at childbirth and propagation. There's also the ancient practice called illegitimacy -- in which trap, by recent count, 40 percent of American babies are caught. It's a lousy, defective means of propagation, with its widely recognized potential for enhancing child abuse and psychological disorientation.

Far, far better is marriage, with all those imperfections that flow from the participation of imperfect humans. Hence the necessity of shooing away traditional marriage's derogators and outright enemies -- who include, accidentally or otherwise, the seven justices of Iowa's Supreme Court. These learned folk tell us earnestly that the right to "equal protection of the law" necessitates a makeover of marriage. And so, by golly, get with it, you cretins! Be it ordered that.

One can say without too much fear of contradiction that people who set themselves up as the sovereign arbiters of reality are -- would "nutty" be the word?

The Iowa court's decision in the gay marriage case is pure nonsense. Which isn't to say that nonsense fails to command plaudits and excite warnings to others to "keep your distance." We're reminded again -- as with Roe v. Wade, the worst decision in the history of human jurisprudence -- of the reasons judges should generally step back from making social policy. For one thing, a judicial opinion can mislead viewers into supposing that, well, sophisticated judges wouldn't say things that weren't so. Would they?

Of course they would. They just got through doing it in Iowa, and now the basketball they tossed in the air has to be wrestled for, fought over, contested: not merely in Iowa, but everywhere Americans esteem reality over ideological fantasy and bloviation. A great age, ours. Say this for it anyway: We never nod off.

See also my recent essay on the controversy at Pajamas Media, "An Attack on Traditional Marriage in Iowa."

For the radical left's campaign of demonizing those of faith, see Pam Spaulding, "National Organization for Marriage's new tactic: fear-mongering without using the word 'religion'."

Satisfying Homosexual Rights Short of Gay Marriage

Everyone's all excited about Maine's approval of same-sex marriage legislation. With Democrat John Baldacci's signature, Maine becomes the fifth state to legalize gay marriage, giving a huge pychological boost to the radical homosexual rights movement.

But polls continue to show strong majorities favoring the retention of marriage as traditionally understood, as a union of one man and one woman for the regeneration of society. Americans should not be forced to have far left-wing secular views imposed on them unwillingly. As I've written about this controversy from here to eternity, I find it a shame to see leftist arguments, which are far from compelling, generally carrying the day in media.

The truth is that entirety of same-sex marriage agenda could be achieved without extending the definition marriage to include loving couples outside of the biologically regenerative conception of the marriage instiution.

Recall, from Susan Shell's argument, "The Liberal Case Against Gay Marriage:

Most, if not all, of the goals of the gay marriage movement could be satisfied in the absence of gay marriage. Many sorts of individuals, and not just gay couples, might be allowed to form "civil partnerships" dedicated to securing mutual support and other social advantages. If two unmarried, elderly sisters wished to form such a partnership, or two or more friends (regardless of sexual intimacy) wanted to provide mutually for one another "in sickness and in health," society might furnish them a variety of ways of doing so--from enhanced civil contracts to expanded "defined benefit" insurance plans, to new ways of dealing with inheritance. (Though tempting, this is not the place to tackle the issue of polygamy--except to say that this practice might well be disallowed on policy and even more basic constitutional grounds without prejudice to other forms of civil union.) In short, gay couples and those who are not sexually intimate should be permitted to take legally supported vows of mutual loyalty and support. Such partnerships would differ from marriage in that only marriage automatically entails joint parental responsibility for any children generated by the woman, until and unless the paternity of another man is positively established.

As for the having and raising of children--this, too, can be provided for and supported short of marriage. If two siblings need not "marry" in order to adopt a child together, neither need two friends, whether or not they are sexually intimate. Civil unions might be formed in ways that especially address the needs of such children. The cases of gay men who inseminate a willing surrogate mother, or lesbians who naturally conceive and wish to designate their partner as the child's other parent, can also be legally accommodated short of marriage, strictly understood, on the analogy of adoption by step-parents and/or other relatives. As in all cases of adoption (as opposed to natural parenthood, where the fitness of the parent is assumed until proven otherwise), the primary question is the welfare of the child, not the psychic needs and wants of its would-be parents.

What gays have a right to expect when seeking to adopt children is that their homosexual relationship as such not be held against them when the state weighs their claim to parental fitness. A liberal approach takes moral condemnation of homosexuality out of the public sphere. Individuals remain free, according to the dictates of their religion or conscience, to abhor gay relations. But they may not publicly impose that view on others. The civic dignity that gays may properly claim includes the right not to be held publicly hostage to sectarian views they do not share.

That liberal sword cuts both ways, however: American citizens should not have the sectarian beliefs of gay-marriage advocates imposed on them unwillingly. If proponents of gay marriage seek certain privileges of marriage, such as legal support for mutual aid and childbearing, there may well be no liberal reason to deny it to them. But if they also seek positive public celebration of homosexuality as such, then that desire must be disappointed. The requirement that homosexual attachments be publicly recognized as no different from, and equally necessary to society as, heterosexual attachments is a fundamentally illiberal demand. Gays cannot be guaranteed all of the experiences open to heterosexuals any more than tall people can be guaranteed all of the experiences open to short people. Least of all can gays be guaranteed all of the experiences that stem from the facts of human sexual reproduction and its accompanying penumbra of pleasures and cares. To insist otherwise is not only psychologically and culturally implausible; it imposes a sectarian moral view on fellow citizens who disagree and who may hold moral beliefs that are diametrically opposed to it.

The deeper phenomenal differences between heterosexual and homosexual relations are hard to specify precisely. Still, these differences seem sufficiently clear to prohibit gay marriage without denying gays equal protection under the laws. Gay relations bear a less direct relation to the generative act in its full psychological and cultural complexity than relations between heterosexual partners, even when age, individual preference, or medical anomaly impede fertility. Gay relations have a plasticity of form, an independence from natural generation, for which they are sometimes praised, but which, in any case, also differentiates them from their heterosexual counterparts. No heterosexual couples have such freedom from the facts of generation, which they can limit and control in a variety of ways but can never altogether ignore. Intimate heterosexual partners realize that they might generate a child together, or might once have done so. This colors and shapes the nature of their union in ways that homosexual love can imitate, and possibly even transcend, but cannot share in fully.

Gay Marriage Disinformation and Intimidation

There's a little debate online this afternoon over Mike Huckabee's appearance on Jon Stewart's show. Apparenlty, Stewart's a big liberal PC master, and he peppered Huck with the standard leftists questions and false equivalencies.

Think Progress has the video, but note this transcripted portion and the response:

Huckabee tried to insist that “60 percent of the American population” opposes gay marriage. Stewart interrupted him, calling it a “travesty” that gay Americans have to plead for their civil rights:

HUCKABEE: If the American people are not convinced that we should overturn the definition of marriage, then I would say that those who support the idea of same-sex marriage have a lot of work to do to convince the rest of us. And as I said, 60 percent of the American population has made the decision–

STEWART: You know, you talk about the pro-life movement [abortion] being one of the great shames of our nation. I think if you want number two, I think it’s that: It’s a travesty that people have forced someone who is gay to have to make their case that they deserve the same basic rights as someone else.

Watch the whole interview ....

It is true that 30 states have banned gay marriage. However, Huckabee — like other conservatives who make similar claims — is wrong to suggest that American public opinion is on his side. A recent poll found that a full 75 percent of Americans favor either gay marriage or civil unions, with nearly 50 percent favoring gay marriage itself. More importantly, the next generation is much more open to gay rights: According to CNN exit polls, an overwhelming majority — 67 percent — of 18-29 year-olds voted against stripping gay couples of their right to marry in California.

Note that Think Progress, to make its case, cites a bogus poll plus the views of young people, who are more liberal on the issue but don't vote in near the proportion to older and more conservative voters.

Just this week Newsweek published the results of its poll on gay marriage, and just 31 percent of those surveyed said they backed full-blown same-sex marriage rights. Huckabee's not only correct, but he's citing conservative estimates on support for traditional family structures.

But that doesn't matter to the radical leftists, who have launched a campaign of intimidation to overturn a decisive majority around the country in favor of retaining traditional heterosexual unions. As the New York Times reports today, in "Gay Marriage Ban Inspires New Wave of Activists," homosexual activists are launching anti-democratic campaigns seeking to browbeat and intimidate people over their agenda:

The ban [Prop 8], which passed with 52 percent of the vote, overturned a decision by the California Supreme Court in May legalizing same-sex marriage. The same court is currently considering a challenge to Proposition 8.

But many activists seem unwilling to wait for a legal solution and have planned a series of events to keep the issue in the public eye, including a nationwide candlelight vigil later this month, a Million Gay March in Washington next spring and continued protests at county clerks’ offices throughout California.

“We’re doing an end run around the mainstream organizations that run our causes,” said David Craig, a movie producer who is an organizer of Wednesday’s “call in gay” protest. “And the Internet has given us the tool to create these events.”

Recall that gay radicals frequently invoke the black civil rights movement in hopes of finding moral authority for their position. But blacks were disinfranchised prior to 1964 and 1965. They really were on the back of the bus.

Today, gay Americans enjoy full equal protection under the law (and recall that gay marriage is not considered as under the civil rights umbrella according to the federal Defense of Marriage Act). What they don't have - and they'll berate, lie, stomp, and whine until they get their way - is the right to impose their will on a majority of voters who have legitimately and peacefully sought to protect their interests through the ballot box.

Californians Reject Gay Marriage

A new Los Angeles Times poll finds a slight majority of Californians rejecting same-sex marriage:

By bare majorities, Californians reject the state Supreme Court's decision to allow same-sex marriages and back a proposed constitutional amendment aimed at the November ballot that would outlaw such unions, a Los Angeles Times/KTLA Poll has found.

But the survey also suggested that the state is moving closer to accepting nontraditional marriages, which could create openings for supporters of same-sex marriage as the campaign unfolds.

More than half of Californians said gay relationships were not morally wrong, that they would not degrade heterosexual marriages and that all that mattered was that a relationship be loving and committed, regardless of gender.

Overall, the proportion of Californians who back either gay marriage or civil unions for same-sex couples has remained fairly constant over the years. But the generational schism is pronounced. Those under 45 were less likely to favor a constitutional amendment than their elders and were more supportive of the court's decision to overturn the state's current ban on gay marriage. They also disagreed more strongly than their elders with the notion that gay relationships threatened traditional marriage.

The results of the survey set up an intriguing question for the fall campaign: Will the younger, more live-and-let-live voters mobilized by likely Democratic nominee Barack Obama doom the gay marriage ban? Or will conservatives drawn to the polls by the amendment boost the odds for the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain?

Either way, the poll suggests the outcome of the proposed amendment is far from certain. Overall, it was leading 54% to 35% among registered voters. But because ballot measures on controversial topics often lose support during the course of a campaign, strategists typically want to start out well above the 50% support level.

"Although the amendment to reinstate the ban on same-sex marriage is winning by a small majority, this may not bode well for the measure," said Times Poll Director Susan Pinkus.

The politically volatile issue leaped into the forefront last week after the court made its judgment in a case that stemmed from San Francisco's unsuccessful effort in 2004 to allow gay marriage in the city. The court's decision, on a 4-3 vote by judges largely appointed by Republican governors, came eight years after Californians overwhelmingly banned gay marriage through a ballot measure, Proposition 22.

The court's verdict threw the issue forward until November, when Californians are expected to be asked to amend the state Constitution to prohibit gay marriage. An affirmative vote on the amendment would reinstate the ban and lead to more litigation over the issue.

Before the court took action, opponents of same-sex marriage already had submitted more than 1 million signatures to the secretary of state's office to put the matter on the November ballot. Secretary of State Debra Bowen has said she will determine its fate by mid-June, but the backers are believed to have collected enough signatures to qualify.

That is a slim majority opposed, although California gets some heavy-duty advertising campaigns, and the liberal bastions of the state don't always win out. It will, of course, but a huge indicate of California's complete consolidation of left-wing hegemony if the measure fails.

See also, Benjamin Wittes, "State of The Unions," who makes an argument similar to one I shared last week:

The California justices declared the right to marry a person of one's own gender a fundamental right, and they declared as well that it violates state equal protection doctrine for California to treat gay and straight couples differently for purposes of marriage. California has a domestic partnership law, which grants same-sex couples virtually all of the rights and obligations of marriage, making the current dispute one of nomenclature over the use of the word "marriage," not about the substance of marriage rights. But as their colleagues in Massachusetts did a few years ago, the California justices treated this accommodation as a kind of "separate but equal" institution--which is to say, not an equal one at all.

"[Affording] access to this designation exclusively to opposite-sex couples, while providing same-sex couples access to only a novel alternative designation, realistically must be viewed as constituting significantly unequal treatment to same-sex couples," the court wrote. Those challenging the law "persuasively invoke by analogy the decisions of the United States Supreme Court finding inadequate a state's creation of a separate law school for Black students rather than granting such students access to the University of Texas Law School."

The equation of gays rights to the black American freedom struggle is problematic, analytically and morally. But Wittes goes on, noting how Barack Obama's an advocate of civil unions, not the nomenclature-specific notion of "gay marriage":

In all but a small handful of states, such a compromise would represent a giant step forward for same-sex couples. Yet according to the Massachusetts and California supreme courts, that doesn't matter.

Their states, these courts have held, are constitutionally obliged to afford gay relationships all of the recognition given to heterosexual marriage. And the desire of Obama and millions of like-minded Americans to give gay couples everything but the name "marriage" somehow warrants comparison with the building of parallel African American institutions by way of keeping blacks out of white ones.

The court was not the most strident advocate of this view. The San Francisco Chronicle exulted in response to the ruling that the justices had "strode past the bigotry, fear and blind adherence to tradition that have stood in the way of marriage equality." But what blind, fearful bigots are the Chronicle talking about here? Not just Californians who oppose gay rights entirely, but apparently also those who, like Obama, support civil unions of the type the court rejected.

Something is wrong with this picture. Somehow, we've confused progress on marriage equality with some of the most opprobrious episodes of our legal, cultural, and moral history. For having the guts to move forward while other states were passing nasty constitutional amendments depriving gays of any marital benefits, Californians stand condemned in their own courts for discrimination and in their own newspapers for bigotry.

Few people, of course, really believe this. When we listen to Obama touting civil unions, we hear the progress that he urges, not some appeal to segregation. But it can't be progress when Obama suggests civil unions, and also progress when a court strikes them down as unconstitutionally discriminatory. And there are costs to asking courts to so far outflank our political system that we would admire politicians for advocating things we would simultaneously want judges to toss out.

One of those costs is that venerable phrases like "equal protection" become so twisted that you can get whiplash watching someone like Obama go from progressive to discrimination advocate.

Read that carefully.

For Obama to favor the California decision would put him on the wrong side of civil rights progress.

Gay Marriage and Young Republicans

Meghan McCain's in the news again with her comments on gay marriage and the GOP. According to Ms. McCain, for "progressive" Republicans, the gay marriage issue is "about reaching a wider base and redefining what it means to be Republican, and leaving labels, stereotypes, and negativity by the wayside."

Read the whole thing, here. Ms. McCain argues that Ronald Reagan, in 1978, championed gay rights during a California initiative battle what would have prevented gays and lesbians from teaching in public schools.

The problem for Ms. McCain, and other advocates of same-sex marriage, is that Americans do not hold discriminatory views of homosexuals. Polls repeatedly find widespread support for the extension of equal protections to gay Americans. The problem is not the extension of rights to same-sex couples per se, but the redefinition of marriage itself. And huge majorities are opposed to changing the historical conception of society's normative tradition of marriage as between one man and one woman. Much of the meme on the left (alleging conservative bigotry) is in fact progressive totalitarianism and intolerance toward the traditional culture. That's why so many regular folks get turned off by the debate: They are hesitant to wade into the culture wars for fear of being attacked and browbeaten as homophobic when they are anything but.

Interestingly, Kristen Soltis, at The Next Right, finds some empirical support for Ms. McCain's argument on gay marriage and young Republicans. But a careful look at numbers offered by Soltis, drawn from the General Social Survey, reveals that youth voters are not all that sold on the acceptablility of homosexual relations, much less gay marriage:

I recently completed research on the topic of young voters and the GOP: where the Republican Party is losing young voters, how serious the threat is to the party, and how the Republican Party should respond. And on this point, Ms. McCain has it right - the issue of gay marriage is one on which young voters and the Republican Party diverge significantly ....

Yet issues relating to homosexuality find vast differences between the young and older voters. In terms of the issue of whether or not homosexual sex is wrong, 44.3% of respondents to the General Social Survey 18-34 believe it is "never wrong" compared to 33.5% of respondents overall. Furthermore, 47.3% of respondents 18-34 said homosexual sex was "always wrong" compared to 55.6% of respondents overall.

Eh, hello? "47.3% of respondents 18-34 said homosexual sex was "always wrong ..."

That statistic sticks out like a sore thumb. This is 2008 data. If nearly half of those 18-34 think that homosexual intercourse is always wrong, it's not a particularly robust statement on youth support for gay rights, much less same-sex marriage. Futher, for all the talk of society moving toward more acceptance of gay lifestyles, that's got to be a troublesome statistics for the radical homosexual activists. Indeed, numbers like these explain precisely why the gay nihilists browbeat tradtionalists into submission: Radical leftists know that their agenda violates the deepest sense of social propriety, and so they must portray traditionalists as bigots and religious "extremists" to make the sale for their own licentiousness.

I just checked Google for my post from January on the radical gay of the political left: "Gay Activists Plan Obama Inaugural Celebrations." At that entry I discussed the inaugural celebrations among gay activist groups, which included the deployment of "rimming stations" by those celebrating at the Doubletree Hotel in Washington. But note that a Google search for "rimming station gay" pulls up all kind of links to gay male sexual pornography. With all due respect to Meghan McCain, I seriously doubt these are the kind of "moderate conservative" views the GOP should be pushing. Or, at least, a look at young gay lifestyles reveals anything but a socially conservative outlook, and I'd wager Ronald Reagan would roll over in the grave at the thought of it.

Besides, as gay conservative Charles Winecoff argued recently, the gay rights agenda is really not about "inclusion" or "full acceptance." It's about social revolution:

Eight years after 9/11, the LGBT community gets its activism fix by indulging in nostalgic, anti-establishment indignation over petty domestic slights. Ganging up on an annoying little old lady carrying a cross at a Prop 8 rally satisfies the itch between workouts and White Parties. But wouldn’t it be genuinely awe inspiring to see masses of musclebound gay men taking on, say, a congregation of homophobic Islamic “thinkers” (who, BTW, love the idea of pushing gay men off cliffs to their death)? ....

Civil unions already offer gay couples the same basic legal status as married couples in several states, including California (and they’re a lot easier to get). But as a result of the gay community’s mass hissy fit to usurp marriage, the religious right has been re-ignited in its holy war against legal recognition of any gay relationships at all ....

40 years after the Stonewall Riots, it’s time for the LGBT community to reconnect with what made us rebel in the first place: the right to live not as conformist dhimmis, but as social, intellectual, and artistic pioneers. Instead of stirring up resentment trying to snatch a piece of a stale pie we don’t really need - and setting back our cause in the process - we need to keep moving forward, not “separate but equal,” but different and equal.

There's a lot to think about for the GOP in acceding to the demands of "progressive" Republicans for a wholesale cultural change that is nowhere near supported by a majority of Americans. Not only that, the youth demographic is open to political persuasion toward more conservative ideals on lifestyle and families.

There's been some talk lately of the formation of third political party, which would in effect be a splinter movement breaking away from today's GOP. So far that chatter's been associated with the Tea Party protests springing up around the country, but if the national Republican Party capitulates to the Megan McCain's and David Frums, it's not unlikely that the push for a new conservative party outside of the traditional two-party system would pick up even more steam.

**********

Related: Gay Patriot looks at the same data from Next Right, and then adds:

I don’t think the GOP need be pro-gay marriage to win the youth vote. I do think it needs [to] offer a vision of choice and opportunity to contrast the Democrats’ preference for government solutions and one-size-fits-all approaches.

That said, I think the best path for the party would be take a more neutral stand on gay marriage and favor a state-by-state approach, consistent with the federalist principles which once undergirded the GOP.

It's interesting that had Iowa taken the "federalist" route this last week, we would not have seen the approval of same-sex marriage in that state.

Obama Was for Gay Marriage Before He was Against It

I've argued a couple of times that Barack Obama will capitulate in due time to the hard-left's demands for gay marriage rights. Obama's official "Change" website features the most comprehensive homosexual rights platform of any incoming presidential administration, and while Obama has argued against same-sex marriage while campaigning, by ideology and inclination he's favorably disposed to the gay marriage agenda.

It's no surprise, then, that the news this morning features a number of stories highlighting Obama's past endorsement of full-blown homosexual marriage rights:

In 1996, during his run for Illinois state Senate, Obama offered a progressive gay rights agenda, which is outlined in the memo above in a response to queries from the now-defunct newspaper, Outlines. The Windy City Times, the paper's successor, has the full story, "Obama Changed Views on Gay Marriage" (see also Ben Smith's report).

The Windy City Times claims that it searched its hard-copy archives for the "missing" questionnaires of the Chicago-area candidate positions for that year's elections. In the case of Obama, with the documents just now coming to light, this could be one of the most momentous bait-and-switch operations in American history.

I argued earlier that at some point, given Obama's language of tolerance and his inherent style of finessing the issues, we'd see a push for gay marriage under a new Democratic administration, starting with the repeal of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, the federal law the relieves states of official recognition of the gay marriages of citizens of another state. As I argued:

The DOMA says that the federal government will not recogize same-sex marriages as coequal to traditional marriages, and it holds that states need not recognize same-sex marriages that have been lawfully authorized by legislatures of other states.

Should the Obama administration repeal DOMA, the gay marriage movement will become legitimized under a creeping federalism of No on H8 intolerance, as more and more states recognize same-sex weddings across the nation - that is, an Obama administration will give the green light to the destruction of this country's traditionalism by legitimizing claims to homosexual marriage equality.

This would be a huge step toward consolidating a national religion of secular humanism at the federal level of American government and politics. Indeed, this is exactly the outcome demanded by radical same-sex activists. We will see a new national polity built on an ideology of cultural relativism, no longer that great shining City on a Hill, but just one more run-of-the-mill postmaterialist industrial state with an anything-goes program of amoralism nationalism.

Here again, are the stake before us ...

It's only a matter of time before we see Barack Obama shift his position back to favoring the gay marriage agenda. Whether this begins with DOMA or with legal challenges to gay marriage bans in the states, my sense is that Obama's early statements on homosexual rights reflect his core beliefs, and he'll use his office to advance that agenda as a matter of personal principle. Strategically, he might delay this step until after reelection in 2012, but a first-term repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" could set the tone at the federal level for a major public relations campaign by the Obama administration in the years ahead.

Hollywood Deserves Credit for America's Shift Toward Homosexual Licentiousness

Hey, it's a Gramscian culture shift underway, right before our eyes.

At National Journal, "Will, Grace, and a Decade of Change on Gay Rights":

Only 10 years ago, sex between two consenting males was illegal in Texas, six in 10 Americans opposed allowing gays and lesbians to marry legally, including the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, and Republican strategists were actively working to enact bans on same-sex marriage on swing-state ballots because it helped their chances politically.

Today, the president of the United States, along with half the country, supports same-sex marriage, one-third of Americans live in states that allow gay couples to be married, and the Supreme Court says the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which defined marriage as a legal bond only available to heterosexual couples, is unconstitutional. The Democratic Party openly embraces gay marriage in its platform, while Republican leaders desperately want to avoid an issue that's now a political loser for them.

The stunning shift in American attitudes toward gays and same-sex marriage, which culminated in a pair of Supreme Court rulings on Wednesday invalidating DOMA and effectively killing an anti-same-sex-marriage ballot initiative in California, has been fueled by the rising influence of a younger, more accepting generation. That generation has been influenced in part by an increasing willingness of gays and lesbians to publicly declare their sexual orientation and by the rise of a popular culture in which gay characters on television and in movies are commonplace.

Polling shows younger Americans strongly backing gay marriage. Two-thirds of millennials--those born after 1981--now support marriage equality, up from about half in 2003, according to data compiled by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. A majority of members of Generation X, born between 1965 and 1980, now favor gay marriage, reflecting more than a 10-point increase over the last decade. A majority of baby boomers and the Silent Generation are still opposed to same-sex marriage, but support even among those older Americans has increased by between 9 and 17 points.

Coverage of the marriage debate in the news media has tilted strongly toward support for same-sex marriage. Pew studies show about half of all stories that covered this spring's arguments before the Supreme Court focused on those who supported marriage equality, while only one in 10 stories covered the opposition.

Researchers also credit popular culture with changing American attitudes on gay marriage. Television shows like Will & Grace, which ran in prime time from 1998 to 2006, and Modern Family, which debuted in 2009, feature gay characters in lead roles. Shows as diverse as The Simpsons, Lost, The Office, and Grey's Anatomy all featured prominent gay characters or characters who came out of the closet. Celebrities like Ellen Degeneres and Rosie O'Donnell who came out gave every American a face to attach to homosexuality.

"I think Will & Grace did more to educate the American public than almost anything anybody has ever done," Vice President Joe Biden said on Meet the Press in 2012, when he inadvertently got ahead of President Obama's decision to publicly support gay marriage.

Being able to attach an individual to homosexuality has played a role, too. Data experts at Facebook showed about 70 percent of users of the popular social network has a friend who publicly identifies as gay or lesbian, The Wall Street Journal reported this week. Gallup polling conducted in May showed 75 percent of respondents said they have friends, relatives, or coworkers who have told them personally that they are gay or lesbian.

"Hollywood has made gay-rights mainstream while making Christianity seem extreme," said Chris Wilson, a Republican pollster. "Try to name one positive portrayal of an evangelical Christian in a prime-time show right now. Conversely, you can likely name at least one positive portrayal of a homosexual character in each popular prime-time program. A decade of that has an impact."

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PHOTO: The Advocate, "Sean Hayes I Am Who I Am."