Posted on 08/01/2009 3:52:05 AM PDT by Kaslin
Not too long ago, conventional wisdom seemed to dictate that gay marriage in America was inevitable. Conservatives, surprisingly, would tell me this more often than anyone. But something has changed. Carrie Prejean has had an effect on us.
That's the argument made by my friend, Maggie Gallagher, president of the National Organization for Marriage, in the latest issue of National Review.
After a series of judicial usurpations, legislative victories, and public-relations onslaughts, the gay-marriage movement took a blow this past November, when Proposition 8 was passed in California. Voters affirmed a ballot measure that defined marriage as "between a man and a woman."
The sea change just may have come when a pretty, empathetic face came onto the national scene. A young beauty contestant was asked about her position on gay marriage, and she answered honestly (and as it turns out, bravely): "I think that I believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman." She added: "No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised."
The fact is that however you spin it, gay unions are not marriage. And I write this totally aware that heterosexual culture has not done what it should to protect marriage. But our falling short -- individually and culturally -- is no reason to call the whole thing off and erase a cornerstone of civilized society.
Gallagher writes: "Same-sex unions are really not just like opposite-sex unions when marriage is in question. Celebrating all forms of adult romantic love equally is not a very good justification for redefining a fundamental institution whose public purposes reach far beyond the affirmation of romance."
The New York Times, just a day or so after Gallagher's piece ran, confirmed that something has changed. In an article titled "Backers of Gay Marriage Rethink California Push," the paper reported on how, discouraged by the political and cultural climate, many gay-marriage advocates are scaling back efforts to overturn Proposition 8. This, despite the supposed inevitability of which some of my friends on the right were all but convinced, not long ago.
And despite the shrill assertions of the Prop-8 protesters, it's not impossible to find members of the non-heterosexual community with an ambivalent view of marriage.
After the recent release of a documentary about his life and career, fashion designer Valentino Garavani was asked if gay marriage should be legal. He answered: "For myself, all these years, I never thought about it in terms of changing the laws. [His business partner and longtime companion Giancarlo] Giammetti and I found our own way -- nothing conventional -- and it was always friendship first, always the most important thing: the friendship. I am neither for it legally, or against it, so I have no personal agenda here."
Not particularly political, this answer can't be taken as outright opposition to gay marriage. But to these ears, there seems to be an acknowledgement of an inescapable truth: There is something transparently different between two men who decide to spend their lives together and a marriage.
And unlike the most strident advocates of gay marriage, who spent the time during and after the Proposition 8 campaign intimidating and punishing those who supported the measure, most of us who oppose gay marriage are not looking to exclude anyone from any kind of happiness.
Carrie Prejean is now a face of that kind of tolerance. The contrast of her measured, mildly offered opinion to the angry, ugly Internet response from beauty-contestant judge Perez Hilton, who asked Prejean the fateful question, was striking. As Maggie Gallagher puts it, Hilton's Web video "reminded too many people of what they saw after Prop 8."
According to a recent CBS/New York Times poll, support for gay marriage has dropped nine percentage points from a 42 percent historic high. According to Gallup, only 13 percent of Americans believe that gay marriage would make us better off, while 48 percent believe it would be change for the worse. While Republicans were tripping over themselves to pose with the party's Log Cabin branch and join the march of inevitability, a beauty queen made it OK to confidently acknowledge reality, in a loving and beautiful and even tolerant way.
“The problem is that you still have judges who want gay marriage and don’t care a whit about public opinion. That and liberal State legislatures who are only too happy to comply with their decrees.”
Agree - simply a tactical retreat - liberals NEVER concede defeat. They knew they were getting a backlash, simply because the country, as a whole will not accept that agenda. So back to what works:
1) Courts
2) Public Schools, under the guise of non-bullying. They need to get one more generation of kids indoctrinated, and then they will be pushing the degree of public support necessary for a frontal assault (so to speak).
Thanks for the link- I like Tammy’s writing and thinking.
(Former) Bishop Chilstrom wrote (http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/2304933/posts):
“I’d like to share my perspective on the fundamental issues that are raised in the CORE Letter and invite you — if you wish — to reply. I’m open to seeing things from a perspective that may not have occurred to me.
“If you asked those in this generation if our stance on homosexuality kept them away or drove them to another denomination they would probably look at you and wonder where you’ve been in the last couple of decades. . .
“Are we in the ELCA on our way to becoming a minority people in an alien culture? Possibly so.”
Perhaps the new-think in this article will be just in time for all the delegates and ELCA members who adjust their theology after holding their finger up to see where the wind is coming from!
12There is a way which seems right to a man,
But its end is the way of death. Pr 14
OOPS! Here I go again, listening to Scripture for God’s perfect, loving instruction for living, even though the bishop also asserts:
“So we have to ask – as we did with the role of women and the place of divorced persons — if a collection of a few verses is the last word. Or is Christ saying something different to us at this moment in the history of the church?”
Follow the money. If legally married partner is eligible for benefits. How much does that cost taxpayers for state/fed employees?
But homosexual "marriage" is to marriage as a wax model of a hamburger is to a steak. Hamburgers and steaks, after all, are both edible.
Homosexual "marriage" is so unlike marriage that the same word cannot be used properly of both. I mean to say, if you want to talk about something you call "gay marriage", then you need a different word to name the union of a man and a woman.
We have got so used to equivocation these days that it gets mistaken for a substantive discussion.
Concurring bump. And it's good news, as well as a good read.
The John Barrowman "money quote" is one of several that go to this issue. Gay diva Michelangelo Signorile spilled the beans years ago in The Village Voice in the course of his long-running diatribe against Andrew Sullivan, when he finally stated openly what conservatives would have played hell to establish on their own, viz., that gay marriage has always been about destroying the heteronormative child-nursery called marriage, precisely because it is heteronormative.
Mating displays and nesting arrangements show all the world nature's providence for the raising of young, and just by existing, they rebuke as deviant the empty couplings of homosexuals.
Liberals use those numbers as part of their propaganda armory when they are campaigning against wishy-washy (RiNO) supporters of the natural moral order.
The numbers they don't use are those that show shifting of attitudes with age, as the cohorts mature.
They're not quite in such a hurry to lay those numbers out for us.
Reminds me of a song from SOUTH PACIFIC...
You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made,
And people whose skin is a diff’rent shade,
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late,
Before you are six or seven or eight,
To hate all the people your relatives hate,
You’ve got to be carefully taught!
Thank you NEA and millions of parents who have GIVEN their children to Moleck!
I think that as the homo-leftists, in their drunken frenzy of imagined power, carelessly continue their in-your-face, outrageous actions, that the general public - even those who have tried not to pay attention out of disgust - will become fully aware of their agenda to shove their value system on everyone. I hope people wake up and push back hard.
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