GAYS DEFEND MARRIAGE

A very helpful site user new to GaysDefendMarriage.com, Musicguy, posted a comment that helped me clarify something about the “marriage equality” movement I have felt for a long time but could never quite articulate.

We have a burden of proof problem in the marriage debate in America.

If I was proposing a major change to one of the most important traditions in America – say, whether we adopt the Euro or whether all drugs should be legalized – I would understand that the burden would be on me to convince the rest of society that my idea is good. I would carefully try to build a coalition and over a number of years try to at least get a first vote in Congress (even if we lose) and hopefully bring enough people on board to build an influential movement and lobby politicians and voters to take our position so we eventually triumph several years later.

Many, many LGBT activists have operated the opposite way. If you read Musicguy and many other posts, it’s as if the default position (Gemara term, sorry) is that same-sex marriage is legal and moral and accepted – and it’s the traditionalists who are trying to take rights away from people who have had them for centuries. It’s as if, ridiculously, the burden of proof is on the traditionalists, who must defend their position or give in. Well, I’m sorry, that’s not how social change has ever worked. Yet the “marriage equality” movement has basically asserted that same-sex marriage is a civil right (despite the fact that nearly all the experts such as the Supreme Court and Barack Obama don’t think it is) and then gotten offended that huge swaths of society would have the temerity to want to keep things the the way they have been throughout American history.

Well, get over yourselves. I acknowledge that at some point legal marriage as an institution may change in certain places. But LGBT people are the ones who have to prove it’s a good idea – it’s not my job to prove it’s bad (though I’m pretty good at it and am willing to do it whenever invited). The plan of the “marriage equality” movement appears to be to win by any means necessary in state after state (including outright cheating in Massachusetts, California, and New York) and then to quickly change the laws as radically as possible so that not only does their side get to define marriage, but so everyone else’s definition must change too if they don’t want the power of the state limiting their assets, their occupation, and their freedom.

Some LGBT activists I’ve debated have gotten angry, raised their voices, hurled terrible insults, insinuated death threats, and I’m told I made one lesbian cry (not on purpose). Why? Because I have the chutzpah to defend the system as it has always been. I found out yesterday a lesbian I really like has decided we’re no longer friends because of the marriage issue. I asked her why cutting an Orthodox Jew out of your life for doing what Orthodox Jews do is any more acceptable than cutting a lesbian out of your life for doing what lesbians do. She ignored the question. I could have sympathy for someone being upset at a friend for advocating an offensive kind of extreme social change, like interning American Muslims. But it is both selfish and childish to join a radical social movement and then insist that everyone you know also abandon the old system, or be cut out of your life.

The “marriage equality” movement shows a great deal of righteous indignation. If anyone should have righteous indignation, it is those who have been blindsided by sneaky, fraudulent and arguably illegal advocacy of an extreme political position, which would not only change society’s definition of a cherished social institution, but would come down hard on the “bigoted” people who lost the debate and are asking for nothing more than to continue using the old definition in the way they perform their jobs, run their businesses, and raise their families. Given that nobody stopped gays and lesbians from pretending their nuptials were real when they were completely unrecognized by the law, the fact that when marriage law changes LGBT people want to use state power to impose their definition universally is truly scary.

I wish both sides of this debate had some interest in compromise, because I think there’s lots of room for it. Instead, we are headed straight for a disaster in which huge numbers of Americans (which ones may depend on the state) get nothing they want while their adversaries get everything they want. This situation is not good for America, but given the lack of flexible people on each side, I have no idea how to fix it.