The Right-Libertarian Argument:

On the SSM issue, I loved this quote from NYT:

“It’s had no effect on my marriage,” said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, “except we get invited to more weddings.”

By way of Andrew Sullivan, some comments on Glenn Reynolds' comments on gay marriage:

Glenn Reynolds airs many of the important points and calmly keeps asking the right questions, it seems to me. His responses are among the sanest I have read on the topic.

Well, that's only because Sullivan doesn't read my blog. Reynolds makes some good points, mostly in questioning the hard-right dogma on the issue, as witness this:

From a reader:

Our society has weakened its foundational stone, marriage, by breaking it free from procreation; we've accepted 'casual sex' and 'starter marriages'. The worst of all may just be 'blended' families - and egad, but what is this latest drumbeat of 'it takes all kinds of people to make a family'? Have we so forgotten the nuclear family that any accumulation and quantity of people together for any period are given the same status? Delusional.

So, you're wrong. Gay marriage will do two things simultaneously and result in a final devastation subsequently. It will 'prove' that the male/female relationship is not unique and valued in our society. It will 'prove' that marriage is not optimal for the healthy rearing of children. Finally, it will be the foot in the door to polygamy. Once we no longer require opposite gender relationships, you cannot legitimately defend the arbitrariness of the number of partners. You know that, as do I.

First, the flaws in this argument are so many and various -- and so shopworn -- what I won't comment on them. Reynold's response is, indeed, one of the few rational ones I've seen from the right:

Okay, more words -- but I still don't see the connection between allowing gay marriage and a society "easily freed from all interpersonal obligations, shedding relationships like worn clothing, children likened to vanity license plates." Where's the causal relationship here?

With Glenn Howes' example, it was predictable that if the government subsidized illegitimate children we'd get more of them. But what's the government subsidizing in the case of gay marriage? It's not promiscuity, or the casual production of children -- we already have plenty of both, and there's no reason I can see that gay marriage makes them more likely.

And of course, he's correct. Not only will same-sex marriage not contribute to the scenario that the comment provides, it will, in fact, operate against those trends. As for the polygamy bugaboo -- so what? That particular bete noir is pretty much irelevant to the question of same-sex marriage. (And frankly, I still don't understand why it's such a horror to Bible-based thinkers.)

The Glenn Howes mentioned is another reader who commented, and there I have problems. Howes' response begins:

Critics say that allowing gays to marry will grievously harm the institution of marriage as a whole. What are the odds in your mind that this is true?

The flaw is immediate, and lies in accepting the critics' statement at face value. There's no reason to do that, particularly with something this counterintuitive. It's not a question of odds, but of demanding that those espousing that viewpoint substantiate their claims. That's been one of the major problems with those who are trying to be "reasonable" on this: it's called letting the opposition frame the debate, which means you've given away any advantage you might have had. Reynolds' response makes the same basic, flawed assumption, which is that the objection is valid. Even if that statment comes from belief, those opposing should be demanding substantiation, and if it boils down to "because I believe it's true," we've already scored major points.

This comment from Reynolds is worth some discussion, as well:

UPDATE: This is part of a string of losses for gay marriage advocates, reports Dale Carpenter, who has detail on what's going on. As I've noted before, it seems to me that the big push on gay marriage came before the public was ready. You have to educate first; there's been good progress on public attitudes toward gays, but it actually seems to go faster when gay marriage advocates aren't getting a lot of publicity and calling people who disagree with them bigots.

First of all, on the surface the spate of state constitutional amendments can be read as a loss for SSM, but -- and there's a big "but" here -- the repeated failures at the national level (and in fact, the static vote levels in Congress on this) are the big victory. Taken in light of changing attitudes, and all else being equal, when the time comes the federal courts will make state constitutions conform to the U.S. Constitution. It won't be the first time.

The knottier problem is the whole "premature/educate the public" thing. That's what's happening, but the noise from the bigots -- and I'm sorry, but a big portion of this is being fueled by bigots -- is obscuring that fact. It didn't become a high-visilibity issue until Focus on the Family and their ilk got hold of it. They've been quite upfront about its effect on their fundraising, which is quite blatantly the major value of the issue to them.

No, not everyone who opposes same-sex marriage is a bigot, but we're treading a very fine line here. If you take bigotry as denial of equal status to a group in the absence of rational reasons, which seems a viable definition to me, then the line is indeed a very fine one. I'm sorry that Suillivan and Reynolds think we shouldn't use the word, and in practical terms they be be correct in part. I think there probably is a proportion of anti-SSM adherents who couldn't be called bigots, but the fact is that the opposition relies on bigotry. Most Germans in the 1930s were not anti-Jewish, but that didn't stop them from voting in the Nazis.

Anyway, back to the education part: Vermont, Massachusetts, now Connecticut, as well as Canada, The Netherlands, Belgium and Spain, are the education, but the anti-SSM forces don't want you to see what's going on there. Aside from the spurious "studies" regularly and dutifully reported by Howard Kurtz (most of which, it seems, he makes up off the top of his head), there is little coverage of what the effect of same-sex marriage has been. (See the quote from Jim McGovern above.) Granted, it's too soon to tell, but this will fall into the same category as the reports on gay couples raising children. The right wing will make up their own set of facts, most of which will directly contravene the facts found from actual studies (thanks to Paul Cameron), and expound them endlessly, while the MSM will dutifully report their whoppers with no rebuttal.

This is one where the gay "leadership" got blindsided, but not by the gay grassroots. They were done in by the right wing (quelle surprise!). Again.