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Gay activists … are pushing hard for gay marriage because they understand very well that marriage is not private, it is normative.” This drives home a key point about single sex marriage that may not have been clear before. It has always seemed to many conservative critics (1) that the demand for gay marriage is excessive and unnecessary (since homosexuals are already protected in their individual rights), and (2) that therefore the attacks on critics of homosexual marriage as anti-gay bigots are absurdly overblown. But since, as Gallagher points out, the institution of marriage is not merely private but public and normative, it follows that to exclude single-sex couples from that institution is to treat them unequally with regard to a fundamental value, and constitutes horrible discrimination. Maggie Gallagher writes: “… are pushing hard for gay marriage because they understand very well that marriage is not private, it is normative.” This drives home a key point about single sex marriage that may not have been clear before. It has always seemed to many conservative critics (1) that the demand for gay marriage is excessive and unnecessary (since homosexuals are already protected in their individual rights), and (2) that therefore the attacks on critics of homosexual marriage as anti-gay bigots are absurdly overblown. But since, as Gallagher points out, the institution of marriage is not merely private but public and normative, it follows that to exclude single-sex couples from that institution is to treat them unequally with regard to a fundamental value, and constitutes horrible discrimination. As with so many other liberal phenomena such as political correctness, it turns out that the demand for gay marriage and the demonization of its opponents are not, as they initially appear to be, an irrational excess of liberalism; they are a logical and necessary outcome of liberalism. A consistent believer in equality must support gay marriage as a fundamental right. Which further suggests that in the long run gay marriage can only be effectively opposed by those who are prepared to challenge liberalism at the most basic level.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 03, 2002 09:58 AM | Send



