Open Letter to Gay Marriage

Open Letter to Gay Marriage Activists - Mitch Berg here. I'm a conservative, a Christian, a divorced guy, and someone who's been on both sides of the gay marriage issue. I may be the least anti-gay Christian Conservative you will ever meet, although some gay activists have tried to quibble with that. They were were wrong then, and they still are.

Andrew Sullivan has long stated a case about gay marriage that has come, at times, very close to convincing me to support the idea - although it has its absurd components to it as well. Sullivan is right about quite a few things; while the Catholic church and most protestants as well will say that marriage is about a man and a woman getting together to create a family, there is no church that bars, for example, the infertile from marrying; churches don't comb through their records to find the childless and warn them to get busy or they'll get annulled.

I think there's a case - a strong one - to be made for civil unions among gay people. I say "case", not "slam-dunk".

Neither Sullivan nor any other pro-gay-marriage activist I've heard has addressed either my major concerns about the issue, or the one, overriding point that Sullivan, as eloquent as he is, consistently fails to touch. If the state tosses out the traditional definition of marriage, what replaces it? "Two people who love each other?" So now the state must toss out a 10,000 year old definition of "Marriage" - as stable and cross-cultural a concept as humanity has ever shared - and cough up a definition of "love", a concept that changes every generation or so? Where do you draw the line between "people who can marry" and those who can't? And by "line", I mean a line that will pass logical muster in a court of law, a place that doesn't easily forgive intellecual and logical sloppiness. Please show me a line that will allow two "people who love each other" that will not allow any pair of roommates or pals or co-conspirators to call themselves "Married" for any reason they want. By the way, "people do that today - look at Britney Spears" will not cut it as an answer; if two people marry for any significant amount of time, then dissolution has serious penalties, even in our no-fault culture, especially if kids are involved. And do you think opening marriage to gays will lower the number of frivolous marriages? What's the over-under on Rosie O'Donnell's marriage?

To cynics, of course, the whole thing is about paying for AIDS. As with so many issues, I recoil at the cynics' logic - but can't prove them wrong, either.

So here's my challenge to all of you that support gay marriage; since the Federal Marriage Amendment is dead on arrival (and I sincerely doubt anyone, including Karl Rove, expected differently) but 2/3 of the American people still oppose the idea of gay marriage, you have some time here:

• Stop trying to do this through the courts. While partner benefits may be a civil rights and liberties issue - and just enough of one to engage the libertarian in me - the definition of "marriage" observed by the vast majority of the people in this nation is not. And just as religion needs to be kept out of government, so government needs to be kept out of religion. To the vast majority in this nation, "marriage" is a religious concept, not a civil one. If you use government to ram your definition down everyone's throat, you will forever delegitimize it.
• Take the time and effort to convince those who disagree, rather than condescend to them. No, really - the worst thing about most Gay Marriage supporters is that most of them are confrontational without being convincing; they seem to hold the conceit that they shouldn't need to be bothered with the necessity of convincing the rabble. It won't work.
• Rebuke Gavin Newsome, Rosie O'Donnell and the rest of the scofflaws. Again, these morons only delegitimize your views. Most Americans are intrinsically law-abiding - and resent those that scoff at the laws (under the protection of benevolent, PC local governments). Ignore this at your peril.
• Learn and listen. Want to learn something about prevailing against popular sentiment? Take a look at the NRA and the Concealed Carry Reform movement. While most Americans are anti-gun control, concealed carry reform is counterintuitive for many people, especially those whose understanding of the issue is a product of prejudice and hysteria. Sound familiar, gays? And yet in the past 21 years, grass-roots movements in 28 states have overcome the media-induced fear and hysteria and passed reform movements. And they've done it one legislator at a time, without getting it passed by judicial fiat. It's legitimate law. And it's done the right way - which is how you're going to have to do this in the long run, if you want gay marriage to have any legitimacy in the eyes of the people.

I see no reason to alter the traditional definition of marriage - and great dangers in doing it. I also can also see reasons to allow binding civil unions between gays.

Posted by Mitch at March 2, 2004 05:05 AM