David Brooks: A Conservative's Gay-Marriage Delusion

In what can only be called a delusion column that purported that gay marriage would be a defeat for personal freedom, New York Times columnist David Brooks - with whom I usually disagree on nearly everything - adds another bizarre argument against gay marriage and suggests that gays don't know what they are asking for.  Apparently, in Brooks' world, not being able to enjoy inheritance benefits, a partner's pension benefits and social security benefits, paying more in estate taxes and a host of other negatives equates to "personal freedom."  Here's a sampling:

Recently, the balance between freedom and restraint has been thrown out of whack. People no longer even have a language to explain why freedom should sometimes be limited. The results are as predicted. A decaying social fabric, especially among the less fortunate. Decline in marriage. More children raised in unsteady homes. Higher debt levels as people spend to satisfy their cravings. 

But last week saw a setback for the forces of maximum freedom. A representative of millions of gays and lesbians went to the Supreme Court and asked the court to help put limits on their own freedom of choice. They asked for marriage. 

Marriage is one of those institutions — along with religion and military service — that restricts freedom. Marriage is about making a commitment that binds you for decades to come. It narrows your options on how you will spend your time, money and attention. 

Whether they understood it or not, the gays and lesbians represented at the court committed themselves to a certain agenda. They committed themselves to an institution that involves surrendering autonomy. 

There's more batshitery, but you get the drift.  What's especially crazy is that gays are constantly cited by the Christofascists as being promiscuous and irresponsible, yet when we as for commitment and responsibility, they work to move Heaven and Earth to block it.  A piece in The New Yorker responds to Brooks'  ridiculous argument and calls him out for what he is: a self-centered bigot who wants to control the lives of others even as he claims otherwise.  Here are some excerpts:

There have been all manner of conservative responses to the growing acceptance of same-sex marriage, from John Roberts’s sulking about gay power to Ross Douthat’s laugh-if-you-will-but-marriage-is-collapsing line to startled acceptance of gay children—or, in the case of Senator Mark Kirk, who announced his support Tuesday, the crediting of a near-death experience—to bitter rejectionism (something George Packer writes about over at Daily Comment). And then there is David Brooks, who examines the situation and is pleased to discover that gays and lesbians have quite misunderstood what they are doing—which is, in short, to prove that David Brooks is right about the world, and that they, until now, have been wrong.

Is he under the impression that the Court is being asked to order a mass shotgun wedding? Otherwise, how does he think that gaining the option to marry means having fewer choices? 

This is the musing of the prince who thinks that the pauper is so much more free than he is—so lucky to be spared your aunt’s questions about when you are going to get married. It is blind to what those questions, or the lack of them, have really meant in people’s lives, as if there was no pain or reflection or growing old, no days when someone was turned away from visiting a hospital room. Brooks treats gays and lesbians, en masse, like hedonistic teenagers who he’s pleased to see have just grown up.

Brooks sees the bathhouses as if there were never raids on them, or as if gays and lesbians had all chosen anonymous settings over the option of holding hands while walking on the street just because they liked dark rooms better. The discovery that even in the most oppressive of circumstances one can create spaces where love survives does say a great deal about the indomitable search for freedom, but to call it freedom’s apotheosis is just absurd. 

If freedom “loses one” when gays and lesbians get to marry—and remember, it’s still only legal in nine states—one wonders what sort of developments would merit a Brooks column entitled “FREEDOM WINS ONE.”  .  .  .  .  Was Edith Windsor, the plaintiff in the DOMA case, more free when she couldn’t tell her coworkers she was engaged without losing her job—I.B.M., her employer, was, at the time, subject to an executive order that kept federal contractors from hiring gays and lesbians as “security risks”—or the day she finally got married? He also misses a crucial point about marriage in a free country: that one of its functions is creating a space where freedom is fostered,  .  .  .  

Brooks needs to open his eyes and get his head out of his ass.