2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumA Conservative Case for Gay Marriage
By Bret Stephens, the WSJ
As conservatives debate the subject of gay marriage, maybe they should pause to consider their view about the other kind of gay marriage. You know the one: He works mind-boggling hours and only comes home once his wife is sure to be asleep. He beams at the sight of an old college buddy. Two years into the marriage, she starts murmuring to her closest friend that he just isn't very interested in her, that way. Five years later he starts acting out in odd ways when he drinks. And he drinks a lot.
(snip)
I'll go out on a limb and wager that, nine times out of 10, we're talking about a human tragedy, or rather two tragedies, his and hers. That is what happens when deceit and self-deception are the foundation of any relationship, marriage most of all. Now and again, the private tragedy becomes a full-blown public catastrophe. As in: Larry Craig, Jim McGreevey, Ted Haggard, you know the list. Soare conservatives for this kind of marriage? Would they, for themselves, choose to share their life, and their bed, with someone toward whom they never had and never will feel a physical attraction?
(snip)
I have a crazy theory; see if you agree. It's that gay people generally want to lead lives of conventional respectability. So much so, in fact, that many are prepared to suppress their sexual nature to lead such lives. The desire for respectability is commendable; the deception it involves is not. To avoid deception, you can try to change the person's nature. Good luck with that. Or you can modify a social institution so that gay people can have what the rest of us take for granted: The chance to find love and respectability in the same person... How odd that the same people who argue that the distinction between "marriage" and "civil unions" has no practical difference should also insist on maintaining the distinction. If all they are doing is taking a bold stand on behalf of semantic purity, what's the point? And if they are trying to preserve a privileged status for traditional marriage, won't that encourage gay people to continue to seek straight marriages?
(snip)
On the matter of gay marriage, the reality we find is millions of Americans who want to participate in all the institutions of American life, from politics to the military to marriage. What is there not to like? Conservatives spent the 90s worrying about the Balkanization of U.S. politics by every group that wanted to emphasize its differences. Here you have exactly the opposite trend. Finally, take a look at the photograph that goes with this column. It's a picture of happiness, respectability and pride. Does that look like the end of Western Civilization? Or does it look like the fulfillment of America's basic promise, the pursuit of happiness, honest, unembarrassed, at nobody else's expense?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324504704578410452988243678.html
(If you cannot open the story by clicking on the link, copy and paste the title onto google)
TxDemChem
(1,918 posts)That sort of marriage is a farce and has bothered me for years. Equality for all!
question everything
(47,470 posts)Recently Liz Cheney - a Republican "strategist" - had an op-ed which I did not read. But the replies, all of them said that Republicans have to concentrate on small government and less taxes and stay away from the social issues of choice and gay marriage.
TxDemChem
(1,918 posts)If they run on social issues with a conservative bent, they'll likely lose many moderate voters. If they run on their economic policies, they'll likely still lose some moderates. They've put themselves in a bind. While there are people who still vote against their best interests, I have noticed a change in the attitudes of certain Repubs in my area. For one reason or another, they have had a family member or friend end up hospitalized and learned that Obamacare isn't as bad as they thought it would be. And they are scared as shit of being let go from work because of their age and their spouses' medical costs to the employer. I hear a lot less bitching these days.
Doctor_J
(36,392 posts)it is galling that that ugly little loser has so many people who jump every time he tells them to
treestar
(82,383 posts)"gay people have the same right to marry as straights - the right to marry a person of the opposite sex."
Conservatives see things in black and white without the nuances - since they are in fact saying they'd rather some straight people end up in such a position than just let people be as they are. So they are sentencing some straight people to such a thing.
They are just cruel people, who think they have theirs, and now want to dictate how others should live or be miserable just to satisfy their ideas of how things should be.