Politics and Culture

In the most absurd ad since Stalin's "If you'd have been declared an enemy of the state, you'd be home now" Siberian condo campaign, the forces opposed to Proposition 8 have launched the above ad equating proposition 8 with anti-miscegenation laws and Japanese-American internment. Let's step back and consider the implications of such a statement:

The ad is saying that 47 states have the equivalent of internment camps and race-separating laws. Besides the obvious ridiculousness of such a statement, consider the irony that the miscegenation laws probably had more to do with preventing mixed race kids than anything else, or, in other words, to prevent the natural expression of marital love.

Anyways, I've never seen such an intellectually vapid movement as the one for gay marriage. It's whole motivating factor is: "Don't be mean." It's whole strategy is to paint opponents of gay marriage as bigots.

Why?

They know that once it becomes possible for people to oppose gay marriage on principled, non-hateful grounds and, more importantly, that marriage is based on something other than feelings, they lose all coherence. Indeed, they eventually admit that marriage isn't very important anyways.

Response:

Is adherence to an opposite-sex standard for marriage bigotry?

Bigotry: The state of mind of a bigot; obstinate and unreasoning attachment of one's own belief and opinions, with narrow-minded intolerance of beliefs opposed to them.

Bigotry is unreasoned. Opposition to same-sex marriage is a reasoned position, unlike the mostly emotional opposition. Basing marriage on a natural fact, that it takes men and women to do that which is necessary for the continuance of the race (There are other, social arguments, as well.) is a lot more reasonable, it seems, than, "My friend is gay and I don't want him to feel left out."

What else would you base marriage on? Love? In that case, who shouldn't get married? What isn't a family, for that matter? If marriage is meaningless, as it must obviously be if it's something different to each person, why should the state encourage anything?

The fact is that men and women are different and basing something on something that's not only obvious, but completely relevant, is very rational indeed.

Just let them:

To paraphrase this argument, "So what? If you let them marry, they'll shut up and we can all just get along."

I don't think it's a good idea to surrender such a basic aspect of society so that you don't have to hear Samuel Jackson complain.

Here are other arguments.

On a strategic note, the Proposition 8 campaign has handled this proposition masterfully. What it had to do was counter the second question, "So what?" It's done that by bringing in schools and children. And, yes, it's a truthful charge.