Just 31 Percent Support Gay Marriage, Poll Finds

Just 31 percent of respondents supported "full marriage rights for same-sex couples," a new Newsweek poll has found.

The Newsweek survey finds across-the-board support for full civil equality for gay Americans, but on the key question of definining marriage as between one man and one women, the country is a long way from overturning what is seen by a majority as a divine union of spouses.

Here's the key question item:

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?

For all Americans, 31 percent support gay marriage, 32 percent civil unions, and 30 percent want no legal protection for gay marriage or civil unions.

Newsweek's essay stresses the growing tolerance for homosexuals in society overall:

When voters in California, Florida and Arizona approved measures banning same-sex marriage last month, opponents lamented that the country appeared to be turning increasingly intolerant toward gay and lesbian rights. But the latest NEWSWEEK Poll finds growing public support for gay marriage and civil unions—and strong backing for the granting of certain rights associated with marriage, to same-sex couples.

But on the controversy over same-sex unions, it all depends on how question items are posed: When respondents were asked if they supported some kind of legally-sanctioned gay and lesbian partnerships, 55 percent agreed. But when questions are broken down precisely on the issue of traditional marriage, less than one-third support the traditional conception of marriage for homosexual couples.

On every other measure of civil equality for gay Americans, the public showed majority support - for example, on adoption and inheritance rights for gay or lesbian couples; Social Security benefits for same-sex domestic partners; health insurance and other employee benefits, hospital visitation rights, openly gay service in the military; equal protection in workplace hiring and promotion; equality in housing opportunity; and gays and lesbians should be allowed to teach elementary and high school children.

On all of these items, a majority of Americans support homosexual equality.

The most striking finding, however, is that a majority of 62 percent of Americans say religious beliefs are central to defining marriage, with a plurality of 41 percent of Americans seeing marriage as exclusively a religious matter.

This is why radical leftists attack Americans who are religious traditionalists as "Christianists."

For gay rights activists to achieve their goal of full marriage equality under the law, they must marginalize Americans of faith who reject a redefinition of culture away from traditional or scriptural foundations.

See more analysis of the gay marriage controversy here.

Dissecting Nihilism and Gay Marriage

Robert Stacy McCain has written on Ta-Nehisi Coates' essay, "Nihilism and Gay Marriage," where the latter attacks oponents of gay marriage as bigots and homophobes. Ta-Nehisi is responding the Andrew Sullivan's long essay excoriating Rod Dreher's social conservatism, "Be Not Afraid, Rod." I saw Sullivan's piece earlier, but I've covered this ground so much in the last six months that I skipped over the piece as nothing really new. Not only that. I'm currently reading Sullivan's Virtually Normal, so as to get a sense of this man's thinking prior to his mental deterioration over the last few years (in the Bush era). Plus, the gay marriage debate's picking up steam by the day; so long's as Sullivan's own sexual proclivities don't kill him before society reaches some satisfactory equilibria, we'll certainly be hearing more from the barebacked narcissist.

In any case, McCain has a great takedown, where he notes in particular:

Sully and his friends insult conservatives by supposing us to be cowards. If we disagree on what is, at heart, a question of policy, we are accused of vicious hatefulness. Indeed, we are said to be suffering from a psychological disorder, homophobia. To this insult - and their arrogant supposition that we are too stupid to know when we are being insulted - I quote one of the great heroes of cinema.

"Don't piss down my back and tell me it's raining."
- The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976)

The discourse Sully means to have with us:

Sully: You're stupid.
Us: Excuse me?
Sully: You're mentally ill, too.
Us: What the . . .?
Sully: Hatemonger!
Us: Boy, I'm about to whup you.
Sully: Fascist!

He does not argue in good faith. We have on our side ancient tradition and religious orthodoxy. He has on his side the prestige of the intellectual elite. Ergo, we are ignorant rabble, and he is so infinitely superior to us that he can insult us with impunity, and we dare not even take notice of the insult.

Actually, I don't think Sullivan has "intellectual prestige" anymore. Ross Douthat, maybe so? Sullivan's mostly getting pulled along for the ride at the Atlantic, where's he's now an embarrassment to that previously august publication.

What's interesting here is actually Ta-Nehisi Coates' elaboration of the "bigots" and "homophobes" meme. It's just a dumb attack, first of all, and pure intellectual cowardice on top of that. The slam on conservatives as "bigots" and "homophobes" simply attempts to shut down debate, not encourage dialog or understanding. What's really bad about Ta-Nehisi is how he reverts to the infantile comparison of gay marriage activists today to black Americans during Jim Crow, Americans who faced the enormity of this nation's system of racial apartheid. There's is very little support for the analogy that Ta-Nahisi attempts, for example:

... in the white male paranoid mind, the deepest ambition of all black men lay between the two legs of some white woman--any white woman ....

Bigotry, in all forms, requires a shocking arrogance, a belief that other communities deepest desires revolve around your destruction. It is the ultimate narcissism, a way of thinking that can only see others, through a paranoid fear of what one might lose. The fears are almost always irrational. To go back to Chuck D, perhaps he was too cold when he said, "Man, I don't want your sister." But there was deep truth in it, the idea was, "Fool, this ain't about you and your fucked-up sexual hangups." In much the same vein when I read people complaining that gay marriage is a threat to traditional marriage, I think, "Fool, these gay motherfuckers ain't thinking about your marriage. This ain't about you and your hang-ups."

Bigotry is the heaping of one man's insecurity on to another. Sexism, racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-Islamism, anti-immigrantism, really all come from the same place--cowardice. In his history of lynching, Phillip Dray notes that mob violence against black men wasn't simply about keeping black men in their place--it was about keeping white women in their place. Lynching peaked as white women went to work outside the home in greater numbers, developing their own financial power base. White men, afraid that they couldn't compete with their women, would cowardly resort to lynching. I am not saying that the anti-gay marriage crowd is a lynch mob. But in tying opposition to the sexual revolution what you see is, beyond a fear of gay marriage, a fear for marriage itself. A fear that their way of life can't compete in these new times. It's ridiculous, of course. But bigotry always is.

Well, yes, Ta-Nehisi, you are alleging traditional Americans to be a lynch mob, because you are conflating the kind of earlier racist bigotry with today's program of moral right that supports the normative conception of the traditional marriage union.

I wrote a post on all of this last November following the violent gay rights protests against Proposition 8, "Gay Marriage is Not a Civil Right." I link there to Eugene Rivers and Kenneth Johnson's, "Same-Sex Marriage: Hijacking the Civil Rights Legacy," where the authors note that:

There is no evidence in the history and literature of the civil rights movement, or in its genesis in the struggle against slavery, to support the claim that the "gay rights" movement is in the tradition of the African-American struggle for civil rights.

And:

It is precisely the indiscriminate promotion of various social groups' desires and preferences as "rights" that has drained the moral authority from the civil rights industry.

Ta-Nehisi Coates descends to the same level of invective found in Sullivan's "Christianist" slur. There's really no underlying argument in support of these claims. Such attacks as "bigots" or "Christianists" are either totally disconnected from historical facts and circumstances, or are just epithets of genuine nihilist hysteria seeking to bully those who hold majoritarian views on the appropriate role of tradition in society.

Of course, It's actually pretty disgusting how low this debate has devolved (to demential and demonism). But that's what you're going to get from folks like Andrew Sullivan and his allies, who are determined to force gay marriage on the rest of society, or die trying.

There's more of this debate at Independent Gay Forum, "Dreher's Conversation With No One." And also Memeorandum.

Gay Marriage Myths Meet the Worst Judge Ever

Two pieces that just devastate any rational basis for the recent U.S. Disctrict Court ruling striking down Proposition 8.

First is Michael Medved, "Gay Marriage Myths and Truth." This is an incredible fisking. Readers should spend some time with it, for example:

3. ”Failure to sanction gay marriage is based on the assumption that “same sex couples simply are not as good as opposite sex couples.” (This language appears verbatim in the judge’s decision).

TRUTH: Opposition to government sanction of gay marriages isn’t based on the notion that opposite sex couples are “better,” but on the idea that they are more consequential, and serve an important social purpose more effectively. Laws in every state recognize the desirability that children should be raised by their biological parents, wherever possible. This is based on the universal, common sense assumption that a child generally will fare best if it is raised by both its birth mother and birth father. Laws on divorce, child custody, adoption and foster-parenting all display this general preference for birth parents to involve themselves in a child’s life. Traditional opposite sex marriage generally produces a situation where both birth parents will participate in parenting – and this shared responsibility even survives divorce in most cases. There is no chance--none—that a same sex marriage can produce a child who will be raised by both birth parents. This doesn’t make that same sex marriage hateful or immoral, but it does make it somewhat less desirable and less significant for society.

4. “Recognizing gay marriage would do nothing to harm existing opposite sex marriages.”

TRUTH: The problem with government endorsement of same sex marriage isn’t damage it would do to current heterosexual couples, but the profound change it would bring to the institution of marriage itself. In every civilization known to historians and anthropologists, marriage involves the union of man and woman—and the recognition that combining the two genders produces a durable unit that is very different from any all-male or all-female combination. The argument for gay marriage depends on the discredited and destructive idea that men and women are identical—that your marriage will be the same whether you select a male or female partner. Gay marriage also separates the institution of marriage from the process of childbearing, at a time when we need to reaffirm that children fare best within a marriage, and marriage becomes more significant when it produces children.

The second piece is Ed Whelan's epic smackdown, "The Most Egregious Performance Ever by a Federal District Judge." The essay takes a look from start to finish to show that intellectually, morally, politically, socially, and legally is Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling:

Walker presided over a parade of anti-Prop 8 witnesses at trial who gave lengthy testimony, only a tiny fraction of which was relevant to any sound understanding of the issues in dispute—and all of that could have been in the form of expert or documentary submissions. And—surprise, surprise—every single one of plaintiffs’ “expert” witnesses is an activist for same-sex marriage whose “expert” testimony was just a repackaging of their political advocacy.

Oh, and let’s not forget that all along Walker apparently failed to disclose to the parties basic personal facts that would have enabled them to assess whether his impartiality in the matter might reasonably be questioned.

Then there’s Walker’s crazed—and, as one same-sex marriage advocate put it, “radical”—ruling on final judgment. That ruling ignored binding Supreme Court and Ninth Circuit precedent, concocted absurd factual findings, and grossly misstated the state of the record on key points.

And, just yesterday, Walker’s refusal to stay his judgment pending appeal, the latest step in his gamesmanship to try to deprive Prop 8 proponents of their appeal rights and to avoid effective appellate review of his shenanigans.

Walker’s course of conduct would be sufficient cause for national scandal in any case. That it comes in a case that aims to radically remake the central social institution of American society makes it utterly intolerable.

I can’t imagine that any federal district judge has ever committed more egregious and momentous acts of malfeasance in a case.

Via Memeorandum.

Bob Page, Replacements Ltd. CEO Who Turned Firm Into Pro-Gay Campaign Outlet, Now Concerned His Radical Politics Could 'Hurt Our Business'

This is a very interesting report at the New York Times, "A Company’s Stand for Gay Marriage, and Its Cost."

It's fascinating that the Times turns this into some kinda hate-based campaign against the business, but the truth is far from it. Mr. Page gave $250,000 to campaign against North Carolina's Amendment One, and then he subsequently turned his flagship store into a campaign office. Longtime customers were turned off by the gay radicalism, which is their right. Nobody came after the dude in the manner of how the NOH8 extremists attacked regular citizens after the passage of California's Proposition 8. Nope. Mr. Page is out and proud, and now he's bumming at the backlash:

In the months leading up to North Carolina’s vote this month to ban gay marriage, most of the state’s business leaders were conspicuously silent. While some executives spoke out against it as individuals, not one Fortune 500 company based in North Carolina, including Bank of America, Duke Energy, VF Corporation and Lowe’s, opposed it.

But one company did: Replacements Limited, which sells silver, china and glassware, and is based in Greensboro. Its founder and chairman, Bob Page, is gay. The company lobbied legislators, contributed money to causes supporting gay marriage, rented a billboard along the interstate near its headquarters, and sold T-shirts at its showroom. Its experience may explain why no other for-profit company followed its example.

Hostile letters and e-mails poured into the company from customers canceling their business and demanding to be removed from its e-mail list. “I understand that your company donated $250,000 or so to the effort to ban the marriage amendment,” read one. “I am very concerned that with an increased visibility and acceptance of the gay and lesbian lifestyle, one of my children, who would have grown up and been happily married to a husband, could be tempted to the lesbian lifestyle.”

Another read: “I was excited to see your wares and expected a pleasant shopping experience. Instead I was accosted by your political views, which I do not share. It was very uncomfortable and unpleasant browsing with all those signs and T-shirts against amendment one, to the point where I had to leave.”

A third said, “Money you used to support this opposition came from my many purchases from your company and that is not O.K. with me,” adding, “I will look for my replacement pieces elsewhere.”

Several writers seemed more sad than angry. “Visiting Replacements Limited has always been one of my favorite treats,” said one. “I had the privilege of experiencing your beautiful store firsthand,” began another. Both said they would never return.

Andrew Spainhour, Replacement’s general counsel and a member of the steering committee that organized opposition to the amendment, tried to recruit other businesses. “I had a lot of phone calls and e-mails that weren’t returned,” he said. “If I did have a conversation, they’d say, ‘Gosh, we can’t do this, we can’t go out on a limb.’ There’s a tremendous amount of fear.”

The company did get a few letters and e-mails of support, but the outpouring against its stand shows that the subject of gay marriage “is hugely divisive in our state,” Mr. Spainhour said. “It’s exposed a lot of fault lines. It’s a natural reaction for people to say, ‘We’re not going to anger 50 percent of the people that we do business with or want to do business with.’ There’s too much downside.”

Mr. Spainhour said he worried about Mr. Page’s safety, and has discussed his concerns with him. He mentioned Charles C. Worley, pastor of the Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, N.C., not far from Greensboro, who preached on May 13 that lesbians and gays should be separated from each other and society and quarantined behind electrified fences. “In a few years, they’ll die out,” Mr. Worley said. “They can’t reproduce.” Video of the sermon circulated on the Internet.

“Bob has been absolutely fearless in the face of that,” Mr. Spainhour said. “It’s a North Carolina that exists but that I don’t recognize. There are two North Carolinas: the progressive cities and college towns, and places where there are no openly gay people.”

Much the same could be said of America as a whole. Although recent polls suggest a majority of Americans favor legalizing gay marriage in their state, those who do are concentrated in the Northeast and on the West Coast. But even in those states most hostile to the idea, support for gay marriage has grown strongly over the last decade.

Most companies have traditionally tried to avoid taking positions on political and social issues. But corporate involvement in campaigns to support gay marriage has mirrored the shift in the nation’s attitudes, from nonexistent 10 years ago to some involvement by major companies in 2008, when Apple, American Apparel, Google and  Levi Strauss publicly opposed California’s Proposition 8 to ban gay marriage (it passed). Last year, corporate support in New York was deemed critical to the Legislature’s passage of a law allowing gay marriage. This year, major corporations based in Washington State, led by Amazon, Starbucks and Microsoft, have publicly opposed an effort to repeal the state’s law permitting gay marriage, scheduled to take effect on June 7.

Mr. Page, 67, said he didn’t like politics and wasn’t “extreme,” or “in your face” about being gay. But, he added: “I just refuse to hide. I did that way too many years and it’s just not healthy.”

At the same time, he said: “I’m always concerned I will hurt our business. I know we have lost business. But I don’t have a board or shareholders I have to answer to. My life is not about money.”

Rod Dreher has a post on this, "Punishing Businesses on Gay Marriage." From the comments there:

I doubt that the conservatives who stop shopping at Replacements will take the course of action that homosexual activists have taken against those opposed to SSM. The homosexual activists are especially aggressive and are determined to shut down all speech that they disagree with check out this link http://is.gd/2L2kRe ... to see an example...

Exactly.

But compare that to the headline at Towleroad, "Gay 'Replacements Ltd' Owner Faces NC Hate After Opposing Amendment One."

It's only "hate" when progressive businesses face political backlash, of course.

Forget Marriage, Gay or Not ... Kill Tradition Altogether

Bob Ostertag, in "Why Gay Marriage is the Wrong Issue," is brutally honest in revealing the subterranean agenda that girds the left's blitzkreig assault on tradition - from marriage itself (which will no longer have original meaning once homosexuals enjoy the same right of union that's by both nature and tradition only available to one man and one woman) to the entire Western ethical system based in Judeo-Christian morality:

Through years of queer demonstrations, meetings, readings and dinner table conversations, about gay bashing, police violence, job discrimination, housing discrimination, health care discrimination, immigration discrimination, family ostracism, teen suicide, AIDS profiteering, sodomy laws, and much more, I never once heard anyone identify the fact that they couldn't get married as being a major concern. And then, out of the blue, gay marriage suddenly became the litmus test by which we measure our allies. We have now come to the point that many unthinkingly equate opposition to gay marriage with homophobia.

Rick Warren is now the flash point, the one all our political allies, even Barack Obama, are supposed to denounce because he doesn't pass gay marriage the litmus test.

I disagree with Rick Warren on many things. To start with, he believes that 2000 years ago God sent his only Son to die on a cross so that mankind would not perish but have everlasting life. To me, that's weird. I don't know how to even begin to address an idea that far out. And he believes that everyone who does not accept Jesus as their savior will go to hell. He doesn't single out gays and lesbians in particular. To me, the weirdest thing there is not that he thinks queers will go to hell, but that he believes in hell at all. But mainline Protestants believe in hell too. So do Catholics, who also add purgatory and limbo.

Steve Waldman, founder of Belief.net (where you find the most thoughtful exchanges on present day religion), did an extended interview with Warren which has been hyped all over the blogosphere as an example of why we should all be screaming for Obama to disinvite Warren from the inaugural. The quote that got all the attention was when Warren said gay marriage would be on a par with marriage for incest, pedophilia and polygamy. And yes, I think that's off-base. Not up there are the scale of the whole God-sent-his-only-Son-to-die-on-a-cross bit, but weird nonetheless.

I thought this was satirical at first, but it's not.

Read the whole thing. It's a tricky argument. On the one hand, Ostertag amounts a vicious atheist attack on marriage traditionalists and those of religious faith. But on the other hand he suggests he'd be perfectly willing to work with "progressive" evangelicals who want to tackle "more important" problems, like global warming, which just "can't wait."

Note though that Ostertag conflates the whole of pro-marriage traditionalism into a faith-based pigeonhole. And that's the trick: There are powerful secular arguments against same-sex marriage, so when leftists take issue with the spiritual proponents of traditionalism, they work to attack the larger edifice of Western culture and tradition that's been the basis for the American political culture, the rise of capitalism (the Protestant work ethic), and the natural law rationalism that grew out of the Enlightement and sustains modern democratic institutions.

The religious argument against gay marriage is a good one. But those who take that approach will be bogged down in defending against anti-Christianist assaults, not to mention the debate over "religious rites" versus "civil rights." And while religion ultimately provides what is in essence the supreme power of universal reason, debating gay marriage on religious grounds puts people of faith in a position of endlessy rebutting spurious allegations of congregational bigotry.

It's too bad that things have come to this, but those who respect traditional values are in a sense fighting a secular creed, an atheistic faith that would banish universal good from the public square altogether. It's this underlying secular humanist agenda that will destroy all that's best about our culture, not just heterosexual marriage traditionalism alone, but the entire moral firmament beneath it.

Gays and Infertile Heterosexual Couples

Citing political scientist Susan Shell, here's this from my post, "The Secular Case Against Gay Marriage":

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.

This really gets to the heart of the gay marriage debate. Radical gay rights secularists are trying to ram down their views on everyone else. William Murchison, for example, decisively argued yesterday against "The Gay Marriage Fantasy." That is, there's really no such thing, logically, as same-sex marriage.

And what about infertile heterosexual couples. Well, in response to National Review's editorial, "The Future of Marriage," check out Andrew Sullivan's latest hissy-fit:

National Review's new editorial comes out firmly against even civil unions for gay couples, and continues to insist that society's exclusive support for straight couples is designed

to foster connections between heterosexual sex and the rearing of children within stable households.

This is an honest and revealing point, and, in a strange way, it confirms my own analysis of the theocon position. It reaffirms, for example, that infertile couples who want to marry in order to adopt children have no place within existing marriage laws, as NR sees them. Such infertile and adoptive "marriages" rest on a decoupling of actual sex and the rearing of children. The same, of course, applies much more extensively to any straight married couple that uses contraception: they too are undermining what National Review believes to be the core reason for civil marriage.

And note that point: "much more extensively." Or, fundamentally radically.

No matter how you spin it, and especially no matter how hard gay radicals attempt to repudiate traditionals as "theocons," the shift to gay marriage is a radical departure from the situation of infertile heterosexuals couples who are married. People like this, when they adopt children, and when they live their lives in the context of society's historically accepted normative institutions, are not revolutionary. To say that gay marriages are indentically co-equal to marriages between infertile heterosexual couples raises the question once again of how we are to define society's social regimes. Look, as Shell notes:

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?

No scheme of demonization concocted by Andrew Sullivan can change the fundamental fact that marriage AS AN INSTITUTION is established for the regeneration of society. Infertile heterosexual couple who marry are not trying to overturn that norm. Same-sex couple who demand marriage are.

Conservatives: Don't Give Up Marriage Fight!

Steve Schmidt, who was a top archictect of John McCain's campaign, and who served as Deputy Assistant to the President and Counselor to the Vice President in the Bush administration, has come out in favor of gay marriage. Schmidt is expected to call on the GOP to embrace the gay marraige agenda at the Log Cabin Republicans' convention today. Schmidt, according to the New York Times, "has a sister who is a lesbian, plans to say that there is nothing about gay marriage that is un-American or that threatens the rights of others and that in fact it is in line with conservative principles." Check the additional links at Memeorandum.

I don't know how the party's going to reconcile the "postmodern conservative" push by many top GOP officials and strategists, and as much as I love gay Republicans as fellow Americans, I see this ideological shift only strengthening the forces of sectarian radicalism on the left, and I'll continue to resist the gay marriage agenda.

Rod Dreher had a great interview with Maggie Gallagher earlier in the week, and she really captures what's happening on secular progressive gay rights front:

Rod Dreher: Maggie, you and I are on the same side of the gay marriage issue, but I am pessimistic about our chances for success. You, however, are optimistic. What am I missing?

Maggie Gallagher: Vaclav Havel mostly. "Truth and love wlll prevail over lies and hate." On that basis Havel took on the Soviet empire. Where is that invincible empire now?

Same-sex marriage is founded on a lie about human nature: 'there is no difference between same-sex and opposite sex unions and you are a bigot if you disagree'.

Political movements can--sometimes at great human cost and with great output of energy--sustain a lie but eventually political regimes founded on lies collapse in on themselves.

I don't think of myself as optimistic: just realistic. What does losing marriage mean? First the rejection of the idea that children need a mom and dad as a cultural norm--or probably even as a respectable opinion. That's become very clear for people who have the eyes to see it. (See e.g. footnote 26 of the Iowa decision).

Second: the redefinition of traditional religious faiths as the moral and legal equivalent of racists. The proposition on the table right now is that our faith itself is a form of bigotry.

Despair is gay marriage advocates' prime message point. All warfare, including culture war, is ultimately psychological warfare. You win a war when you convince the other side to give up.

So now you want to decide we've lost on an issue where, in the March 12 CBS News poll two-thirds of Americans agree with us. I mean, does this make sense?

Public opinion hasn't changed much at all. What's changed is the punishment the gay marriage movement is inflicting on dissenters, which is narrowing the circle of people willing to speak. This is a very powerful movement, no question. Nobody understands that better than I do.

But in the end--and this is not necessarily "optimistic" -I think civilizations that can't hang onto an idea as basic as to make a marriage you need a husband and a wife aren't going to make it in the long haul.

So I'm not worried about the progressive myth that 200 years from now gay marriage will be the new world norm. I'm somewhat more worried about the kind of cultures around the world that might survive. It's not clear to me they'll have the virtues of American civilization for gay people or anyone else.

Really, this marriage idea has been around for a long time. I think it has legs.

Finally there's a third reason I'm not in despair. I've learned from five years in this fight--especially the last two years--that there are many things I can do that make a difference. I was told--by good people who agree with me, really smart people too--that California was impossible; you can't raise the money, nobody cares about marriage, if you get it on the ballot, we'll lose anyway because there's a generational shift. And none of that turned out to be true. Here's the good news: as civilization collapses the opportunities for intelligent and committed people to make a profound difference actually increase.

People are flocking to the National Organization for Marriage (www.nationformarriage.com), not because we try to scare them about how bad things are going to be--but because we offer them a chance to come together with other people of all races, creeds and colors to stand up for a core and timeless good.

Here's what I know that maybe you can't see: There are enormous untapped energies out their waiting for someone to organize them effectively.

The entire interview is avaible at the link.

How Does Gay Marriage Affect Me?

Well, there's a lot of news on the gay marriage front today.

The Vermont legislature legalized same-sex marriage by overriding the veto of Republican Governor Jim Douglas (more here and here). Counterintuitively, what may be even more significant is the vote at the D.C. Council to recognize the gay marriage laws of other states. As the Washington Post reports, "The unanimous vote sets the stage for future debate on legalizing same-sex marriage in the District and a clash with Congress ..." And that debate would then raise questions in Congress surrounding the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, which allows states to refuse recognition of the same-sex marriages of another state.

I've written so much on this question, and sometimes I have to wonder: Maybe Rod Dreher's right - are traditionals indeed "on the losing side of this argument?"

Actually, I don't think so. The problem is that I'm not seeing enough conservative activism against the same-sex movement, or maybe I missed it?

In any case, let me share another section of Robert Bork's essay making the case for a Federal Marriage Amendment, "The Necessary Amendment." I often hear the question posed, well, "how does gay marriage even effect me?" Bork responds:

How does homosexual marriage affect me? What concern is it of mine or of anybody else what homosexuals do? The answer is that the consequences of homosexual marriage will affect you, your children, and your grandchildren, as well as the morality and health of the society in which you and they live.

Studies of the effects of same-sex marriage in Scandinavia and the Netherlands by Stanley Kurtz raise at least the inference that when there is a powerful (and ultimately successful) campaign by secular elites for homosexual marriage, traditional marriage is demeaned and comes to be perceived as just one more sexual arrangement among others. The symbolic link between marriage, procreation, and family is broken, and there is a rapid and persistent decline in heterosexual marriages. Families are begun by cohabiting couples, who break up significantly more often than married couples, leaving children in one-parent families. The evidence has long been clear that children raised in such families are much more likely to engage in crime, use drugs, and form unstable relationships of their own. These are pathologies that affect everyone in a community.

Homosexual marriage would prove harmful to individuals in other ways as well. By equating heterosexuality and homosexuality, by removing the last vestiges of moral stigma from same-sex couplings, such marriages will lead to an increase in the number of homosexuals. Particularly vulnerable will be young men and women who, as yet uncertain of and confused by their sexuality, may more easily be led into a homosexual life. Despite their use of the word “gay,” for many homosexuals life is anything but gay. Both physical and psychological disorders are far more prevalent among homosexual men than among heterosexual men. Attempted suicide rates, even in countries that are homosexual-friendly, are three to four times as high for homosexuals. Though it is frequently asserted by activists that high levels of internal distress in homosexual populations are caused by social disapproval, psychiatrist Jeffrey Satinover has shown that no studies support this theory. Compassion, if nothing else, should urge us to avoid the consequences of making homosexuality seem a normal and acceptable choice for the young.

There is, finally, very real uncertainty about the forms of sexual arrangements that will follow from homosexual marriage. To quote William Bennett: “Say what they will, there are no principled grounds on which advocates of same-sex marriage can oppose the marriage of two consenting brothers. Nor can they (persuasively) explain why we ought to deny a marriage license to three men who want to marry. Or to a man who wants a consensual polygamous arrangement. Or to a father to his adult daughter.” Many consider such hypotheticals ridiculous, claiming that no one would want to be in a group marriage. The fact is that some people do, and they are urging that it be accepted. There is a movement for polyamory—sexual arrangements, including marriage, among three or more persons. The outlandishness of such notions is no guarantee that they will not become serious possibilities or actualities in the not-too-distant future. Ten years ago, the idea of a marriage between two men seemed preposterous, not something we needed to concern ourselves with. With same-sex marriage a line is being crossed, and no other line to separate moral and immoral consensual sex will hold.

Now, just wait ... Pam Spaulding and other representatives of the nihilist hordes will no doubt be attacking me as "bigot" for even posting this.

God, what is happening to this country?

Gay Sexual Abandon and the Perverse Inversion of Values by Same-Sex Extremists

That's the takeaway for me, from this long piece at the New York Times, "Married, With Infidelities."

Gay sexual abandon. Meaning the gay rights movement is expanding the boundaries of what's morally acceptable to accommodate a model of openly aggressive sexual abandon. Gays want sex when they want it, with whomever they want it, wherever they want it. And they're not afraid of saying it, at all. The Times interviews Dan Savage, the author of the homosexual advice column "Savage Love." Yeah. Savage. And open. Savage is all about openness in marriage. For example, if you're not sexually satisfied, tell your spouse. Say you need more. Get approval and go get laid somewhere else. Savage's mantra is "good, giving, and game," GGG for short. Be good, giving, and game for sexual freelancing. It's a different kind of morality, you might say. Here's this from the article:

Savage’s honesty ethic gives couples permission to find happiness in unusual places; he believes that pretty much anything can be used to spice up a marriage, although he excludes feces, pets and incest, as well as minors, the nonconsenting, the duped and the dead. In “The Commitment,” Savage’s book about his and Miller’s decision to marry, he describes how a college student approached him after a campus talk and said, as Savage tells it, that “he got off on having birthday cakes smashed in his face.” But no one had ever obliged him. “My heart broke when he told me that the one and only time he told a girlfriend about his fetish, she promptly dumped him. Since then he had been too afraid to tell anyone else.” Savage took the young man up to his hotel room and smashed a cake in his face.

The point is: priests and rabbis don’t tell couples they might need to involve cake play in their marriages; moms and dads don’t; even best friends can be shy about saying what they like. Savage wants to make sure that no strong marriage ever fails because an ashamed husband or wife is desperately seeking cake play — or bondage, urine play or any of the other unspeakable activities that Savage has helped make speakable. If cake play is what a man needs, his G.G.G. wife should give it to him; if she can’t bring herself to, then maybe she should allow him a chocolate-frosted excursion with another woman. But for God’s sake, keep it together for the kids.

Okay. Right. What else did Savage do up in his hotel room with the young cake boy? Pattycakes? Folks should read the whole thing when they have a few minutes. And I'll tell you: Savage Love won't work in my house. My wife and I are traditional. We love each other exclusively. And we do so because that's how we conceive marriage. When you marry you're committing to that one person you want to share your life with, exclusively, "forsaking all others." There are lots of reasons for this. But most of all is the integrity of the institution itself, and what it means for the sanctity of vows, honesty, and the regeneration of families. Dan Savage and his husband Terry Miller have a child by adoption. How's that going to look as the child get older and sees his parents f**king around with whoever they want? And back to the article, Savage talks about how a man would feel giving his wife permission to have extramarital affairs, but then he realizes he can't abide by the thought of someone else vaginally penetrating his wife. You think?!!

I don't look at the gay marriage issue from a religious perspective primarily, because the argument against gay marriage is at base socio-biological, about preservation of families and society, and the regeneration of cultures. It's about preserving that which is eternally right and good. There is nothing natural about same sex marriage in terms of creating life and living in commitment for strength and safety in family. Same sex couples cannot naturally reproduce, and marriage is most basically about binding one man and one woman for the purpose of natural regeneration. For the gay movement to abandon that to uncontrollable desires is obscene. But there's the morally religious argument as well, seen today at the Wall Street Journal, "Evangelicals and the Gay Moral Revolution."

The Christian church has faced no shortage of challenges in its 2,000-year history. But now it's facing a challenge that is shaking its foundations: homosexuality.

To many onlookers, this seems strange or even tragic. Why can't Christians just join the revolution?

And make no mistake, it is a moral revolution. As philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah of Princeton University demonstrated in his recent book, "The Honor Code," moral revolutions generally happen over a long period of time. But this is hardly the case with the shift we've witnessed on the question of homosexuality.

In less than a single generation, homosexuality has gone from something almost universally understood to be sinful, to something now declared to be the moral equivalent of heterosexuality—and deserving of both legal protection and public encouragement. Theo Hobson, a British theologian, has argued that this is not just the waning of a taboo. Instead, it is a moral inversion that has left those holding the old morality now accused of nothing less than "moral deficiency."

The liberal churches and denominations have an easy way out of this predicament. They simply accommodate themselves to the new moral reality. By now the pattern is clear: These churches debate the issue, with conservatives arguing to retain the older morality and liberals arguing that the church must adapt to the new one. Eventually, the liberals win and the conservatives lose. Next, the denomination ordains openly gay candidates or decides to bless same-sex unions.

This is a route that evangelical Christians committed to the full authority of the Bible cannot take. Since we believe that the Bible is God's revealed word, we cannot accommodate ourselves to this new morality. We cannot pretend as if we do not know that the Bible clearly teaches that all homosexual acts are sinful, as is all human sexual behavior outside the covenant of marriage. We believe that God has revealed a pattern for human sexuality that not only points the way to holiness, but to true happiness.

There's more at the link, and see also Maggie Gallagher, "New York's GOP Lets Down the Base."

The media may portray the New York victory as the decisive turning point that makes gay marriage inevitable across the country—as they almost always do. Yet every victory for our marriage tradition that I have personally helped make happen was heralded as impossible: from Prop 8 in California, which overturned a state supreme court decision imposing same-sex marriage; to overturning gay marriage in Maine in 2009 through the referendum process; to blocking gay-marriage bills in New Jersey, Maryland and Rhode Island; to passing a marriage amendment through the Minnesota legislature that will go to the people in 2012.

Our string of unheralded victories is possible only because the American people, though they have few visible champions, continue to stubbornly believe that gay marriage is not a civil right and that marriage is different for a reason: These unions make new life and connect children to a mom and dad.

Gallagher's group, the National Organization for Marriage, has pledged $2 million to defeat New York legislators who voted for the bill, and they're gleefully targeting freshman Republican Senator Mark Grisanti, one of the lawmakers who flip-flopped on the issue.

Anyway, at Keith Olbermann interviews Savage at the clip. The political and religious discussion, with sex talk, is at the second half. Savage is super articulate. He makes sexual abandon and immorality sound cool. He jokes about people who "butt f**k" and then offers himself up to Tony Perkins. Savage also goes off on people with strong values as being religiously abused. The most interesting argument is that Savage claims that you can't hold traditional values and also be friendly with gays or have good friends who are gay. Savage perfectly embodies gay bigotry. He says if you are traditional on marriage you must instinctively react violently to gay people. That'a lie that makes people of values primitive. It's also fundamentally dishonest. But this is how gay activists win. They paint conservatives as potentially violent anti-gay extremists, and people of values, because they have values not to offend, capitulate. That's how the gay thuggery of sexual abandon wins. It's evil.

Courts Granting Equality Between Same-Sex and Heterosexual Unions

If you read this piece at the Los Angeles Times carefully, you'll notice that gays are increasingly being afforded full family rights by the states (adoption, insurance, etc.) without changing the definition of marriage:

BUILDING MOMENTUM? Supporters of gay rights demonstrate in Philadelphia. Legal scholars expect several more states to legalize same-sex marriage this year.

When Maine's highest court ruled two years ago that lesbians Marilyn Kirby and Ann Courtney could adopt the two children they had cared for since 2001, the man who has led the state battle against gay marriage for 25 years got a glimpse of the defeat now looming.

"There's a sense people have -- a sense of inevitability -- and a tremendous sense of frustration because of the history of the gay rights fight in Maine," said Michael Heath, executive director of the Maine Family Policy Council.

He was referring to rights incrementally accorded to gay couples that have led to virtual equality between same-sex and heterosexual unions -- a significant trend occurring in Maine and other states where gay marriage remains banned, experts on both sides of the issue agree.

Those rights are expanding as legally married gay couples relocate to states that don't allow same-sex marriage, forcing courts, legislatures and employers to deal with the resulting issues of custody, divorce, inheritance and end-of-life decisions.

The adoption ruling in Maine had the effect of granting parental rights to same-sex couples. By the time the Legislature adjourns for the summer, experts expect Maine to become the fifth state to legalize same-sex marriage -- 11 years after voters banned it.

In New York, which doesn't allow same-sex marriages but recognizes those conducted elsewhere, recent court decisions have granted a divorce to two gay men and surviving spouse benefits to another.

In California, federal judges have twice overruled decisions by the federal government to deny healthcare coverage to gay employees' legal spouses, teeing up a constitutional challenge to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which forbids federal benefits for same-sex couples.

Same-sex marriage is legal in Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont and Massachusetts, which began the trend five years ago. (Iowa issued its first marriage licenses April 27, a few weeks after its Supreme Court gave approval; weddings in Vermont will begin in September.) Within a year, Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey and New York will probably follow suit, say sexual orientation scholars at the UCLA School of Law's Williams Institute; New Hampshire's Senate approved a same-sex marriage bill Wednesday.

And as more same-sex couples wed in places where it is legal, the administrative fallout in other states is expected to keep expanding.

There's a couple of things going on here: (1) Many courts and legislatures are moving to expand equal protections to same-sex couples short of legalizing gay marriage, but the article also shows, (2) how gay activists are playing up the "inevitability" angle for all it's worth. Actually, less than one-third of American nationally, and even fewer in recent Iowa polling, support full-blown same-sex marriage rights (supporting civil unions instead). So, gay radicals - seeking to change the definition of marriage even though states are expanding gay partnership rights - will continue to push in the courts and legislatures at the state level to create a jigsaw puzzle of conflicting laws and regulations, attempting to tie the federal system in knots.

Conservatives know exactly what's happening:

These are serious cases of widespread importance, where we see same-sex couples attempting to use the laws of another state to push their agenda in a state that does not recognize their union," said Jim Campbell, litigation counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, a Christian legal organization.

"This is a danger that will spread to all states but will not necessarily result in same-sex marriage in all states," Campbell said, noting that opponents will continue to press their elected officials to reject same-sex marriage initiatives.

Julaine Appling, executive director of Wisconsin Family Action, agrees, saying her group "has always taken the position that these kinds of decisions should be made in the Legislature, where they can be fully vetted and can have public opinion given."

Well, gay activists really don't want to have their views "fully vetted." The more we actually hear these people, the less inclined are we to support their case.

Photo Credit: Los Angeles Times, "Same-sex Marriages Gradually Gain Legal Ground."

Depraved, Hypocritical Leftists Attack Conservatives for Standing Up for Conservative Principles

If libertarian "conservatives" think they're doing the GOP a favor by pushing the party toward accepting homosexual marriage as a matter of policy, they need to think again.

The leftist media went batsh*t at the news of Sen. Rob Portman coming out for homosexual marriage. This was a yawner to me, so I ignored it at the time. But now here comes the depraved homos at Think Progress with their creepy CPAC video alleging that conservatives are bigots for disagreeing with Sen. Portman's change of heart. See: "VIDEO: CPAC Attendees Blast GOP Senator Who Announced Support For Marriage Equality." (Watch the clip here.) And don't you love the headline at Towleroad?, "CPAC Attendees Blast Sen. Portman For Loving His Gay Son: VIDEO."

Actually, conservatives are not "blasting" him for "loving his son," but for abandoning conservative principles. But compare the CPAC attendees who stayed true to their values to the depraved progressive hypocrites who viciously attacked Portman for coming out for so-called "marriage equality." You'd think he'd be getting big cheers on the left for finally seeing the light, but you'd be wrong. Portman was vilified and demonized as only the left knows how. At Twitchy, "No gay-lo for Rob Portman: Many libs lash out at senator for 'evolving' on same-sex marriage."

no rob portman you're still a piece of shit, you're not suddenly cool for deciding gay marriage is ok when your son came out to you
— ＨＯＧ_ＣＲＡＮＫＥＲ６６６ (@aardvarkwizard) March 15, 2013

I hate people like this. Fuck everyone else’s child. What a douche. \\RT @politico: Rob Portman backs gay marriage after son comes out…
— Bonzo!® (@BonzoTMonkey) March 15, 2013

Rob Portman (R-OH) now in favor of gay marriage after his son comes out - before that was knowledge? Fuck 'em. Hypocritical asshole. #tcot
— Ian Hays (@iansane_) March 15, 2013

If you're an elected official who suddenly supports gay marriage because your child is gay, you are the worst kind of asshole. #Portman
— Aaron Firouz (@aaron_fury) March 15, 2013

@robportman you're still a piece of shit #sed
— dcc killaz (@dcckillaz) March 15, 2013

Indeed. 'How much icing do you think it would take to spell out “Fuck that guy”?' wonkette.com/506464/hero-se…
— Ann Somerville (@ann_somerville) March 16, 2013

Personally, I'm not impressed with Portman's change of heart, but Glenn Greenwald has a word or two for the progressives attacking him:

Portman's explanation [of a family member coming out as gay] is far from aberrational or confined to one ideological group: it's how political opinions are often shaped and how political progress is often achieved. And it's definitely the leading reason why so many people who opposed gay equality a short time ago now support it.

And for alll those libertarian "conservatives" who think they're on the right side of history, the Atlantic's Noah Berlatsky illustrates the kind of thanks you'll get from the left, "Rob Portman's Selfish Reversal on Marriage Is a Triumph for Gay Rights":

Portman ... [sees] his personal experience with gay issues in political terms. That's not because he's especially sensitive or thoughtful — there is no reason to think he is either. Rather, it's because gay rights advocates have been so successful in linking the personal and the political together that even the most unreflective career pol can't help but connect them....

[His] op-ed makes him sound like someone who, faced with a moral dilemma, has muddled through as best he can with the least thought and effort possible. The fact is, though, that most of us, most of the time, are more like Rob Portman than we are like, say, Mildred Loving, the woman whose Supreme Court case overturned the laws against interracial marriage. The marriage equality movement, like any moral movement, has been built by activists with great struggle and courage. But it's success is measured by the fact that it has framed the issues in question such that even the selfish and small-minded can, given a little push by their families, make the right choices. Portman is not an inspiring figure. But there is something inspiring in realizing that the movement has reached a point where even someone like him finds it easier to make the right choice than the wrong one.

Yay, Sen. Portman! Way to win friends and influence people on the left!

Look, voters are not fools. If they're picking candidates and parties on the basis of policies like homosexual marriage, they'll go for the truly left-wing party every time: the Democrats. The so-called conservatives at CPAC who're deluding themselves as hip and cool for supporting same-sex marriage are essentially being hammered by the progressive degenerates for whom bunghole bungee-jumping is a regular pastime.

The conference looked like a lot of fun, but considering my firm belief that legally nationalizing homosexual marriage will be a disaster for America's children, I'm glad I held off on attending #CPAC2013.

Gay Marriage Victories May Signal Larger Shift

Perhaps broader social acceptance of homosexuality is genuinely breaking through. The gay marriage movement saw some of its first state-level victories on Tuesday night. Progressive depravity is getting a pass at the polls.

At the Los Angeles Times:

Four years ago, opponents of gay marriage celebrated a winning streak, having persuaded California voters to end marriage rights for gays. If courts or legislatures bowed to the pro-marriage forces, the opposition figured it could just go to the ballot box to restore marriage bans.

But all that changed Tuesday, when gay marriage supporters succeeded in the four states where the question was on the ballot. Until then, voters had consistently opposed marriage rights, most recently in May in North Carolina.

The opposing sides differed on the significance, with Christian conservatives considering the election a blip and gay rights activists describing it as a monumental sea change. But the results emboldened activists to target other states for marriage rights and left their opponents reeling.

Gay rights activists singled out President Obama's change of heart in favor of same-sex marriage as a key ingredient in Tuesday's victories. Just four years ago, the sponsors of Proposition 8's ban on same-sex marriage made robocalls to California homes with a recording of Obama saying he opposed gay nuptials.

"His shift caused a lot of other politicians to feel free to change their positions as well and made it easier for African American churches to change their positions," said Jon W. Davidson, legal director for Lambda Legal, a gay rights organization.

With election victories in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota and Washington, gay rights activists said Wednesday that they would focus next on winning marriage rights both in the federal courts and in state legislatures, which could include states such as Rhode Island, Delaware, Hawaii and Illinois.

"When you have momentum on your side, it's the time to double down," said Chad Griffin, who launched the legal fight against Proposition 8. "That's exactly what we've got to do: We've got to take this momentum and move forward."

RELATED: "Bishop E.W. Jackson: ‘It Is Time For a Mass Exodus from the Democrat Party’."

BONUS: "Gay Marriage is Not a Civil Right."

Debating Gay Marriage

There's been a little debate at my last night's, "Cindy McCain Shills for No on H8 (and Meghan Too)." Actually, some of the comments are not really addressing my arguments, or by now they've moved past them to emotionalism. So, as I've done this before, I'll simply repost some articles I've blogged earlier.

From David Blankenhorn, "Protecting Marriage to Protect Children":

Marriage as a human institution is constantly evolving, and many of its features vary across groups and cultures. But there is one constant. In all societies, marriage shapes the rights and obligations of parenthood. Among us humans, the scholars report, marriage is not primarily a license to have sex. Nor is it primarily a license to receive benefits or social recognition. It is primarily a license to have children.

In this sense, marriage is a gift that society bestows on its next generation. Marriage (and only marriage) unites the three core dimensions of parenthood -- biological, social and legal -- into one pro-child form: the married couple. Marriage says to a child: The man and the woman whose sexual union made you will also be there to love and raise you. Marriage says to society as a whole: For every child born, there is a recognized mother and a father, accountable to the child and to each other.

These days, because of the gay marriage debate, one can be sent to bed without supper for saying such things. But until very recently, almost no one denied this core fact about marriage. Summing up the cross-cultural evidence, the anthropologist Helen Fisher in 1992 put it simply: "People wed primarily to reproduce." The philosopher and Nobel laureate Bertrand Russell, certainly no friend of conventional sexual morality, was only repeating the obvious a few decades earlier when he concluded that "it is through children alone that sexual relations become important to society, and worthy to be taken cognizance of by a legal institution."

And from Susan Shell, "The Liberal Case Against Gay Marriage":

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.

See also, Vinegar and Honey, "Flabbergasted!"

Gay Marriage Activists Undermine Their Own Cause

There's a lot of interesting commentary tonight on the gay marriage debate.

Andrew Sullivan has new, windblown essay that is positively infuriating, frankly: "Modernity, Faith, And Marriage" (Pete Abel's got the link if you want it):

If conservatism is to recover as a force in the modern world, the theocons and Christianists have to understand that their concept of a unified polis with a telos guiding all of us to a theologically-understood social good is a non-starter. Modernity has smashed it into a million little pieces. Women will never return in their consciousness to the child-bearing subservience of the not-so-distant past. Gay people will never again internalize a sense of their own "objective disorder" to acquiesce to a civil regime where they are willingly second-class citizens. Straight men and women are never again going to avoid divorce to the degree our parents did. Nor are they going to have kids because contraception is illicit. The only way to force all these genies back into the bottle would require the kind of oppressive police state Rod would not want to live under.

"Rod" is Rod Dreher, to whom Sullivan is responding. I want to comment on Dreher's piece in a later post.

What I find interesting and problematic is Sullivan's declaration of the death of conservatism by nothing other than fiat: His argument is a sophisticated version of the temper tantrum-demonstrations we've seen following the passage of Proposition 8 on November 4th.

Sullivan's assumption, stated in his "never again" declamations, is that success of the gay marriage movement is inevitable. The position, of course, is not only intellectually dishonest, but is radical secular propaganda: This idea of a teleological endpoint, of course, is the universal good of God's grace over mankind. To argue that conservatives must abandon that is like saying that a heart must stop beating. Sullivan appeals to death, because he can't argue straight to existential values, for he reject morals if that suits his utility-maximizing purpose.

Sullivan also can't make up his mind, for example, where tonight he says:

I have nothing against the voluntary and peaceful activities of any religious group, and regard these organizations as some of the greatest strengths of America.

But recall what he said just the other day, of the Mormon Church, which provided financial backing for Proposition 8:

... when they use their money and power to target my family, to break it up, to demean it and marginalize it, to strip me and my husband of our civil rights, then they have started a war.

Sullivan's a gasbag, frankly, and he's torn between sinister poles of outward belligerence and surreptitious persuasion.

I'll have more on this later, at least because of Sullivan's delusions of victory (recall that three states passed initiatives confirming marriage as between one man and one woman, so all this talk of inevitability is itself unhinged from fact).

In the meanwhile, readers should read this essay from Lucy Caldwell at the Harvard Crimson (alternative link here):

The push for same-sex marriage is a rally for additional rights. While this characterization of the movement strikes most gay rights activists as harsh, it is a useful distinction to be made when devising ways to advance the cause effectively. Yet gay rights advocates have not taken the appropriate cues from their defeats earlier this month, as reflected in their continued ignorance of their opponents’ thoughts and motives. They seem unable to face that democracy has spoken, and it has said “no” on same-sex marriage.

One major problem with the gay rights movement is that it simultaneously champions democratic government and rejects it. The movement views marriage as a civic institution rather than a religious one (this is one distinction between marriages and civil unions), but only so long as government functions from a pro-gay marriage position. Once the cogs of government have turned to an anti-gay marriage slant, gay rights activists cease to be tolerant of the democratic process. Cue the banners decrying opponents as hateful and intolerant. Is this unfortunate divide what activists seek? Certainly that sort of culture of separatist intolerance is what arises when advocates take this approach.

And it is this very same-marriage authoritarianism that dooms the movement for the near future (who knows what happens in the long term?).

Sullivan's already noted this, but he's now changing his tune, blowing off the movement's violence and intimidation as aberrations, as part of his cognitive dissonance.

I can't say I'm as optimistic as Ms. Caldwell, especially with an activist judiciary caving to the radical secular humanist agenda. But given the outrageous behavior of the gay marriage H8ers so far, there's certainly a strong possibility of a crushing implosion on the activist left.

Arguments in Perry v. Schwarzenegger

A year ago, I wrote more on gay marriage than anything else. On the heels of passage of Proposition 8, Californians witnessed one of the most vicious campaigns of partisan demonization witnessed in post-civil rights American politics. I noted this briefly the other day, in my essay, "The Coming Prop 8 Show Trial."

The question of gay marriage to me is extremely complicated, but what most upsets me is that while I've argued against same-sex marriage on both religious and secular grounds - and as well in terms of democratic self-determination - it's almost always the case that my positions are attacked as "bigoted" or "Christianist." And of course, it hardly helps that the neo-communust America-bashers of International ANSWER are the biggest interest group advocates of the pro-gay marriage movement. It's hard to get excited about a cause that's being most vigorously promoted by the same folks who support the killing of America's soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, or by those who would tear down American sovereignty in a cross-border terror-campaign of open-immigration extremism. But these are the same people. And as Michelle Malkin reminded us the other day, they don't play by the rules (see, "The Anti-Prop. 8 Mob Strikes Again").

That's why it's extremely interesting that Theodore B. Olson, the former U.S. Solicitor General and long-time Republican Party insider, is one of the lead attorneys arguing for repeal of Proposition 8 tomorrow. Olson's essay is here, "The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage," and there's a video as well (via Memeorandum). If you read the essay, you'll see that Olson argues mostly on the basis of constitutional law, and he states his case eloquently. But constitutional, states-rights issues are beyond what I want to address here (and I've handled them ad nausea previously). My basic point all along is that on a national controversy this big, it's best to let the will of the voters prevail, for no court ruling will have the same kind of popular legititmacy as that found in a majority vote of the electorate. And gay marriage is not equivalent to Jim Crow segregation, so those arguments suggesting that only the courts can bring about fundamental change are deeply flawed. The fact is, the push for gay marriage is a hate-based campaign. A hardline interest-group constituency, with deep ties to the communist left, decries traditional values as based in bigotry and religious oppression. Advertisements like this below, from One Iowa, are in that sense deceptive in their appeals to history and values. The policy goals of such groups will by definition destroy the very history they're purporting to uphold.

But to get an idea of how deep-seated is the left's hatred of traditionalism, get a load of Michael Stickings' attack on Theodore Olson. Again, be sure to have read Olson's essay and to have watched the video. Olson is deeply authentic. And recall that his wife, attorney Barbara Olson, died on Flight 77 on September 11 when al Qaeda terrorists drove it into the Pentagon. Here's Stickings' attack on Olson, and thus conservatives in toto:

It is indeed extremely helpful that Ted Olson, a prominent conservative Republican legal figure, is a prominent supporter of same-sex marriage, and the "conservative case" he makes for it is indeed a strong one ....

Conservative opposition to same-sex marriage, rooted in bigotry (what else?), is indeed deeply hypocritical given conservatives' admiration of the institution of marriage, but what Olson doesn't seem to understand, or at least to acknowledge, is that conservatism, or at least the dominant strains of contemporary conservatism, does not consider the "principle of equality" to be anything "bedrock" or "central." If it did -- if conservatives really were committed to "the revolutionary concept expressed in the Declaration of Independence" -- Olson wouldn't be such a rare exception among his own kind.

Olson has a leading voice on the right, but he's speaking rationally inside a hurricane of irrationality and about justice to a political movement that has embraced injustice as a driving force. I admire him for this, but I fear he'll get nowhere.

In other words, Olson's a outlier from the bastion of evil, or something.

So, with this kind of hate-based gay rights advocacy in mind, it's important to recall that leftists won't stop at gay marriage. Kids will be getting "fisting" in the schools in no time, abortion on demand for young girls, and just about every other hardline-leftist agenda item you can imagine.

So just think ahead, beyond tomorrow. If we break down the traditional institution of marriage as it's stood in this country throughout our history, we'll break down our country itself.

In any case, see also Edwin Meese III, "Stacking the Deck Against Proposition 8."