One of the better blog posts I've ever read, and I've read many. Link. Excerpts:
Remember how we were promised that unilateral divorce would expand liberty, and only affect people in bad marriages? Meanwhile the government reduced everyone's marriage contract to the status of a gambling debt--alone of contracts, marriage promises cannot be enforced. Unilateral divorce changed the whole culture of marriage, not just those who divorce. And the people who advocated for it were so sure that more divorce would make children better off, weren't they? Only a fool, or a religious zealot, could disagree. . .
But of course if you are advocating for SSM, you really do know that social meanings matter. You've made passionately clear that an identical institution called “civil unions” that delivered all the legal incidents of marriage just wouldn't be good enough, because it doesn't mean the same thing. You seek to use the power of government to take all those accumulated meanings of marriage (which were not created by the government) and re-direct them to same-sex relations, and many of you clearly also want to discipline those who don't accept your moral view, to the best of your abilities. And so many want to do this in the name of liberty, without even acknowledging what SSM is: the use government power to impose a new morality on a reluctant people. . .
And the people who advocate SSM do so (mostly) with very little insight into the magnitude of the change they are asking us to accept. After all you've decided SSM is a civil right, so you get to impose your morality on people in good conscience (that's what civil right means), and so you now don't have any responsibility or burden of proof in this matter: it is totally up to others to prove to you there will be any negative consequences. . .
Same-sex marriage is not a civil right, because marriage is not discriminatory. It has its own dignity and purpose, rooted in real and enduring human realities. Marriage is deeply important not just to those who personally do it, but to anyone who cares about the future of the society we share.
Thanks, Max. Hut.
