Gay marriage opponents' strategy uncertain in 2015

[bedstuy]

Country Class,

Don't get your hopes up that the poll is an outlier. Gay marriage is coming whether we like it or not, whether this poll shows it or not, and whether the Supreme Court says so in June or not. While the details of some minor side-issues haven't quite been decided yet, this one's over; it's a 20 point basketball game with a minute left.

So the question becomes, what now? Where do we as social conservatives go from here? Other than abortion (abortion is the only social issue with stable views across all age groups for most surveys) we are going to lose these fights and continue losing them. I think we may be hitting the reality that changing our culture and its morals can’t start with politics. It may end up there, but it has to start with individual people. As Mother Theresa once said, “Be the change you wish to see in others”. Hold strong to your moral convictions through thick and thin and don’t give in to whatever concupiscence you experience in life. We may individually feel that God is dead to our world, but realize that God can’t be dead to the world as long as he lives in you. I’m not saying don’t vote, but if we really want to change our society’s ideas of right and wrong the place to do it is in our lives not at the ballot box. As far as I can tell, no country was ever converted by voting for the right candidate.

To do any of this requires us not to collapse into bitterness and despair but to engage the world and to do it with love. No one has ever been convinced by a despairing rant.  The gulag may indeed be coming, but nothing makes the gulag as horrifying as the fear of the gulag. Your cross may be heavier than most, but it is still yours to carry through the pain. As Christians, we look to imitate Christ, who carried his cross, painful as it was, without a grudge. Carrying a grudge, bitterness, and anger, can only make your cross heavier, not lighter. As painful as it might be, you still have something to offer this world, a purpose in this life. No matter what the law says, no one can take that away.

Ugh, gross.  The entitlement, self-pity and sanctimony of Christians in this country is so disgusting.  The hypocrisy just makes me want to puke.

It's a cliche at this point but, "If you don't want a gay marriage, don't get one dumb dumb!"

And, oh no!  Other people are taking your right to use the government to dictate how other people live their lives.  Other people.  Their lives.  Get it?  You can disagree about this as a policy matter.  But, don't make it about yourself for God's sake.  It's not about the rights of Christians whatsoever.  It's about the rights of gay people.  Nobody wants to put you in a gulag because you don't like gay people. 

How is this painful for you?  What about all the gay people who suffered?  What about the gay person who couldn't visit their partner in the hospital, even though their homophobic family could?

Spare me this put-upon, sanctimonious, "we're just like Jesus on the cross" act.  You're not like Jesus, you're a bully.  Your religion bullied gay people and ruined their lives, and now people realize it's wrong.  That's the fight we're having. 

[bedstuy]

I don't mind your posts TJ, at all, on SSM, and appreciate them. But I am curious whether at this juncture, you have a secular, data based argument against SSM to which you honestly subscribe. Arguing theology qua theology when it comes to public policy is a dead end. It will persuade nobody but believers. But then you already knew that.

None that I imagine will convince you But to answer your question, there is data out there showing a variety of worse outcomes for children (getting arrested, drug use, etc.). Do I honestly subscribe to it? I think it's probably true but to be honest, I never really have much faith in the statistics of social science research. I know far too many grad students in those fields

Like I said before though, gay marriage is coming regardless at this point. There is little to be gained by using political capital to try and stop it. For example, I don't blame Governors Christie and Walker in the slightest for waving the white flag when their states' gay marriage bans were overturned (what more could they have done?). I still do oppose it on a personal level and will never politically endorse it (as though anyone cares about my political issue endorsements)(I am not a consequentialist), but that ship has sailed.

On the well-being of children point, that's a super weak argument.  First off, there is no good data on the subject because you can't do an experiment.  And, you don't know how much homophobia and barriers to gay adoption/marriage influence the outcomes for children of gay parents.  And, what data we have is totally inconclusive.    

But, just from the well-being of children angle, gay marriage is only a plus.  As a conservative, you think kids do better when their parents are married, right?  Well, there are currently many children of gay unmarried parents.  So, gay marriage only benefits those kids, right?

Then, there are the children of closeted gay people who grow up miserable or in broken homes because their parents got married due to religious guilt, fear or internalized homophobia.  Demonizing homosexuality only hurts those people, their straight partners and their children.

So, that well-being of children argument is completely not in your favor.

The bigger issue now, both nationally and for me, is what we should do about all those florists and cake bakers. I would gladly sign off on some sort of compromise that enshrines government recognition of gay marriages and prohibits discrimination against gays and lesbians in housing, employment, and the usual service realms with religious exemptions for workers from partaking in events that go against their beliefs. I do not believe there is support on the other side of the aisle for such a compromise. Rather I get the impression, at least from the banter I've seen on the topic, that any religious exemption at all is a redline that cannot be permitted. Thus we get back to the gulag

I would point to Indiana as an example of what happens when you add religious exemptions. True, Indiana did not ban discrimination against gays in their original bill, but it was already legal in Indiana to discriminate against gays before the RFRA was passed and no one seemed to care then. It was only when religious freedom was involved did everyone blow a collective gasket. I would also like to add, since I'm not sure I've ever actually posted it on here, that I do not think it ought to be legal to discriminate against gays in employment, service, housing, etc. That is not a matter of political capital; I simply do not think it should be legal regardless of the popularity of the idea. Then what defines discrimination vs. religious freedom exemptions in my opinion? Discrimination is denying service based on who someone is rather than the content of the service they ask you to provide. It should be illegal for, say, to give a totally random example, a pizza parlor in South Bend, Indiana to refuse to let customers into the store because they're gay. It should be legal for said pizza parlor to refuse to cater a gay wedding reception. It should also be legal for them to refuse to cater a pot convention, or a political convention, or a Bar Mitzvah, or a First Communion party, or whatever they don't believe in catering.

Your persecution complex is showing again.  

To me, this is a balancing question.  

You have the ability of gay people to have normal lives on one hand, which you respect to your credit.  That means being treated as a member of the general public, with respect to public accommodation, employment, housing, etc.  

On the other hand, you have people who find gay marriage morally wrong or icky.  If those people want to fire a gay employee or refuse to rent an apartment to a gay person, we don't care.  But, if that person's service or job requires a real expressive component, we care about their right to conscience.  If we're talking about clergy, or a musician at a wedding, there is a really strong argument for the freedom of conscience.  In between maybe we have a florist or a baker, where there is some small expressive content, but they're mostly just selling a product.  They're not selling gay flowers or gay cake, they're selling a cake that will be eaten by gay people.  

And, that's where the freedom of conscience ends for me.  You don't get to wall yourself off from elements of society purchasing your products if you sell them to the general public.   To me, it can't be a right to be refuse to be indirectly involved with gay people.  Selling a person a cake does mean you endorse their lifestyle or think they're a swell person.   It has to be a right to freedom of conscience and freedom of expression, the right not be forced to endorse ideas you don't support.

So, the real question with these laws is how do you protect the freedom of conscience without creating an open-ended right to discriminate?  I think that law would have to focus on expression and not involvement and only apply to services that mix personal expression with business, like entertainment and religious services.

[bedstuy]

- I realize that couples marry out of love for each other and not just out of a desire to have children, but the state obviously incentivizes it mainly because of the procreation aspect. Even though not all of the benefits of marriage clearly benefit the child, the state still offers these benefits to attract couples to marriage, which makes it more likely that they will choose to have a child. Obviously, the state has a limited amount of money, so it only makes sense to fully incentivize the marriages that most promote its interest in procreation, and that is opposite sex couples, who unlike most gay couples, can typically reproduce and can therefore have children regardless of the availability of adopting children.

Are you seriously saying that gay marriage is too expensive?

Let me just cut to the heart of this dumb argument. 

You keep using the word "incentivize."  This means "to provide with an incentive."  An incentive is something that, "incites or has a tendency to incite to determination or action."  So, when we talk about incentives in a law, we're talking about how the law is going to influence different people to act. 

So, who pray tell, has less incentive to have children if we have same-sex marriage? 

Do you mean that the government wants homosexual people to be completely closeted and have heterosexual relationships and families?  Do you mean that same sex marriage will encourage or promote homosexuality and turned straight people gay?  What is the way that this incentive works by inciting people to action?