David Harsanyi at The Federalist is one such conservative supporter who is having second thoughts. In “Was I Wrong To Support Gay Marriage?” he articulates what should have been obvious to everyone from pretty much the beginning of the push to redefine marriage:
I’ve supported same-sex marriage ever since I first heard the idea. And when I became a political columnist in the early 2000s—despite being the “conservative” at a good-sized newspaper—I was the only one at the paper (as far as I can recall) who unequivocally backed gay marriage publicly. Though I wasn’t gullible enough to believe I’d be persuading many readers, I was gullible enough to believe that my allies in the cause were merely concerned with “equality.”
As we dig out from the avalanche of half-baked platitudes about “love being love” and watch alleged news organizations and the White House adorn themselves in cheerful rainbows, we can look forward to the self-righteous mobs that will be defaming anyone who is reluctant to embrace the state’s new definition of marriage. Love is love, except when a person loves their God and follows the principles of their faith, evidently.
Do a majority of Americans who support gay marriage believe these traditionalists deserve to be treated like unrepentant Klan boosters? Of course, there will always be the obnoxious Puritan, as the quote goes, who loves God with all his soul, but hates his neighbor with all his heart. But, as any honest observer would tell you, there are also many profoundly decent religious people who aren’t filled with enmity, aren’t bigoted, aren’t hateful, but do still hold long-established notions about what marriage should look like.
Many on all sides of the cultural/political spectrum are amazed at the swift turnaround in the support for same-sex marriage. They site poll after poll to show that the American people now overwhelmingly support same-sex marriage. But these polls show no such thing. Yes, you heard it here first. In fact, they show exactly what Mr. Harsanyi so gullibly believed for so many years: That most Americans are decent, nice people who are amendable to arguments about equality. Even when these arguments are a rouse to mask the true motivations of gay rights advocates and their progressive/liberal allies. Now that they have the law on their side, no more rouse needed.
These lies are not unlike President Obama’s and Hilary Clinton’s bold faced lies during the 2008 election that they supported the historical, traditional definition of marriage as between a man and a woman, one of each, when everyone knew they didn’t believe that at all. The modern progressive/liberal is political and ideological to the core. Everything they do can be justified in their minds on utilitarian grounds; that if it furthers their progressive/liberal agenda, anything goes. It kind of reminds me what Fyodor Dostoyevsky said in The Brothers Karamazov , “If there is no God, everything is permitted.” This is not to say that all progressives/liberals are atheists, but that their religion is subservient to their political and ideological agenda: nothing transcends it.
Harsanyi asks a number of relevant questions that would have been better asked before thousands of years of practice and tradition were overturned by five unelected lawyers in black robes:
The question is, do a majority of Americans who support gay marriage believe likening these people to racists and misogynists is reasonable? Do they believe that all people must surrender their convictions and endorse the state’s definition?
Do a majority of Americans support gay marriage because they have a desire to see civil society overtaken by the administrative state?
And did a majority of people support gay marriage because they wanted to coerce others to participate in the ceremony against their beliefs?
The answer to these questions should be in the affirmative if you follow the ineluctable logic from the progressive/liberal premise: sexual orientation is analogous to race. People cannot help who they are attracted to and thus want to have sex with because it is a trait everyone is born with. Ergo sexual orientation should have the same legal standing as race, and anyone who doesn’t believe same-sex marriage is marriage is a bigot. American jurisprudence doesn’t look kindly on bigots.
Harsanyi asks a final question and gives an answer that is as predictable now as it should have been all along:
How many backers of theoretical gay marriage will regret the reality of gay marriage? As a matter of policy, it doesn’t matter much anymore. And I have no moral qualms about same-sex marriage itself. I don’t believe it destabilizes the institution or ruins the lives of children. Then again, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum, either. If same-sex marriage isn’t just a pathway to happiness, freedom, and equality for gay citizens, but a way to pummel religious Americans into submission, it will be a disaster.
Great. Thanks for telling us now.
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