Anti-Gay Conservatives: An Odd Silence on the Supposed Damage Gay Marriage Will Cause

The professional Christians and demagogues of the far right foam at the mouth and claim gay marriage will result in the end of Western civilization and or that a generalized a parade of horribles will follow -- the weakening of marriage as an institution being but one of them. This Neanderthals, however, never provide concrete examples of what the alleged damage would be. They allege that gay marriage will be the end of America, but somehow they never seem able to specifically describe the damage they predict. Indeed, the only thing that would happen is that their bigotry and feigned religious sensibilities might be offended and that children might learn that - God forbid - LGBT people exist. Something that the children will find out about anyways. Recently Steve Chapman at the Chicago Tribune wrote a column that looked at this phenomenon and challenged the homophobes to give concrete examples of how gay marriage damages Western civilization of heterosexual marriages. Here are some highlights:

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Opponents of same-sex marriage reject it on religious and moral grounds but also on practical ones. If we let homosexuals marry, they believe, a parade of horribles will follow . . . We're about to find out if they're right. Unlike most public policy debates, this one is the subject of a gigantic experiment, which should definitively answer whether same-sex marriage will have a broad, destructive social impact.Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire have all decided to let gays wed.

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But with the experiment looming, some opponents seem to be doubting their own convictions. I contacted three serious conservative thinkers who have written extensively about the dangers of allowing gay marriage and asked them to make simple, concrete predictions about measurable social indicators -- marriage rates, divorce, out-of-wedlock births, child poverty, you name it. . . .Yet none was prepared to forecast what would happen in same-sex marriage states versus other states.

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Maggie Gallagher, president of the Virginia-based Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, has declared that losing this battle "means losing American civilization." But she politely declined my invitation.

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What's equally striking is that when I made similar inquiries to people on the other side of the debate, I encountered no such reluctance. They forthrightly asserted that granting gays access to matrimony will have no discernible impact. "I wouldn't expect much effect on the social indicators that would be visible to the naked eye," said Jonathan Rauch, a researcher at the Brookings Institution in Washington and author of the 2004 book, "Gay Marriage: Why it is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America."

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In the case of Maggie Gallagher, she is making a VERY nice living off of anti-gay bigotry, paying herself what some have alleged is an excessive six figure salary, not to mention the fees she likely makes as a speaker at wingnut functions. Maggie refused to cite concrete adverse effects, to Steve Chapman but she certainly has had no problem pocketing the money that being a professional homophobe brings her. Of course, she is not alone in this regard - Tony Perkins, Peter LaBarbera and many others similarly make lucrative careers out of denigrating other citizens as they pat themselves on the back for their self-proclaimed piety.

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Now, Gallagher has apparently thought better of her refusal to respond to Chapman's challenge and has a post in the National Review where she lists five predictions as to what gay marriage will wreak on America. None of them look like they remotely threaten America's existence or heterosexual marriage to anyone who is not either unbalanced or in the anti-gay battle for the money it brings them. Here is Maggie's parade of horribles:

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1. In gay-marriage states, a large minority people committed to traditional notions of marriage will feel afraid to speak up for their views, lest they be punished in some way.
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2. Public schools will teach about gay marriage.

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Parents in public schools who object to gay marriage being taught to their children will be told with increasing public firmness that they don't belong in public schools and their views will not be accomodated in any way.
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Religous institutions will face new legal threats (especially soft litigation threats) that will cause some to close, or modify their missions, to avoid clashing with the government's official views of marriage (which will include the view that opponents are akin to racists for failing to see same-sex couples as married).

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Support for the idea "the ideal for a child is a married mother and father" will decline.

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Of course, Maggie has no data to back up her predictions. Rather, her lists only a set of talking points she and others like her utilize to try to generate irrational paranoia. I hate to be the one to tell her, but Maggie's views ARE akin to racism. Sexual orientation is NOT a choice any more than skin color, so anti-gay discrimination is on a par to racism in that regard (and don't forget that the Bible has passages that can be used to support racism and slavery). In fact, as one reads Gallagher's parade of horribles, the only real consequence of gay marriage will be that the CIVIL laws will no longer favor RELIGIOUS based discrimination against other citizens.