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.