Reactions and Proactions to libs and cons and poli-pundits of all sorts.
Sunday, March 14, 2010
The End of the Gay Rights Movement
Andrew Sullivan concludes a lecture at Princeton with a powerful appeal for the conservative case for gay marriage and civil rights. This is Part 7 of his speech, but you really should listen to all 7 of the clips.
For the record, I've long thought that the logical conservative solution to the gay marriage question is to make *all* marriage a private affair, and let married people arrange their finances, property, power-of-attorney and survivorship stuff however they want. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to buy a "do-it-yourself marriage document" kit at Wal-Mart for $30, file it with the state, and be done.
The real question then comes down survivorship benefits for state and federal programs such as Social Security or pension programs. Here, I tend to agree with President Obama: I don't oppose opening up those benefits to gay couples (though I do see more potential for fraud than with straight couples), but right now we simply can't afford to, because we aren't even in a position to meet our long term obligation to the hetero-couples who are already entittled to those benefits.
Gay marriage will eventually become a reality. The biggest obstacle to achieving this soon is the movement itself. The harder you push, the harder your opponents push back. If the gay marriage movement were to calm down (and stop the public displays of obscenities such as the “gay pride fairs”) the public backlash would die.
Once the backlash died down the public would become more comfortable with the concept. Once the public became comfortable with gay marriage it would then become an accepted fact.
For the record, I've long thought that the logical conservative solution to the gay marriage question is to make *all* marriage a private affair, and let married people arrange their finances, property, power-of-attorney and survivorship stuff however they want. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to buy a "do-it-yourself marriage document" kit at Wal-Mart for $30, file it with the state, and be done.
ReplyDeleteThe real question then comes down survivorship benefits for state and federal programs such as Social Security or pension programs. Here, I tend to agree with President Obama: I don't oppose opening up those benefits to gay couples (though I do see more potential for fraud than with straight couples), but right now we simply can't afford to, because we aren't even in a position to meet our long term obligation to the hetero-couples who are already entittled to those benefits.
Gay marriage will eventually become a reality. The biggest obstacle to achieving this soon is the movement itself. The harder you push, the harder your opponents push back. If the gay marriage movement were to calm down (and stop the public displays of obscenities such as the “gay pride fairs”) the public backlash would die.
ReplyDeleteOnce the backlash died down the public would become more comfortable with the concept. Once the public became comfortable with gay marriage it would then become an accepted fact.