Maggie Gallagher on why she’s not giving up the fight against same-sex marriage:
“Truth and love wlll prevail over lies and hate.” On that basis Havel took on the Soviet empire. Where is that invincible empire now?Same-sex marriage is founded on a lie about human nature: ‘there is no difference between same-sex and opposite sex unions and you are a bigot if you disagree’ .
Political movements can—sometimes at great human cost and with great output of energy—sustain a lie but eventually political regimes founded on lies collapse in on themselves.
I don’t think of myself as optimistic: just realistic. What does losing marriage mean? First the rejection of the idea that children need a mom and dad as a cultural norm—or probably even as a respectable opinion. That’s become very clear for people who have the eyes to see it. (See e.g. footnote 26 of the Iowa decision).
Second: the redefinition of traditional religious faiths as the moral and legal equivalent of racists. The proposition on the table right now is that our faith itself is a form of bigotry.
Despair is gay marriage advocates’ prime message point. All warfare, including culture war, is ultimately psychological warfare. You win a war when you convince the other side to give up.
So now you want to decide we’ve lost on an issue where, in the March 12 CBS News poll two-thirds of Americans agree with us. I mean, does this make sense?
Public opinion hasn’t changed much at all. What’s changed is the punishment the gay marriage movement is inflicting on dissenters, which is narrowing the circle of people willing to speak. This is a very powerful movement, no question. Nobody understands that better than I do.
But in the end—and this is not necessarily “optimistic”—I think civilizations that can’t hang onto an idea as basic as to make a marriage you need a husband and a wife aren’t going to make it in the long haul.
So I’m not worried about the progressive myth that 200 years from now gay marriage will be the new world norm. I’m somewhat more worried about the kind of cultures around the world that might survive. It’s not clear to me they’ll have the virtues of American civilization for gay people or anyone else.
Really, this marriage idea has been around for a long time. I think it has legs.
Finally there’s a third reason I’m not in despair. I’ve learned from five years in this fight—especially the last two years—that there are many things I can do that make a difference. I was told—by good people who agree with me, really smart people too—that California was impossible; you can’t raise the money, nobody cares about marriage, if you get it on the ballot, we’ll lose anyway because there’s a generational shift. And none of that turned out to be true. Here’s the good news: as civilization collapses the opportunities for intelligent and committed people to make a profound difference actually increase.
Find out more at the National Organization for Marriage .
