I’ve resisted posting some of the more dimwitted responses to Judge Walker’s ruling on the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, but, sorry, I yielded to the impulse of posting the dumbest column of the year, by Ross Douthat. What offends me is its creepy, fruitless attempt to play it both ways. First he calls opponents of gay marriage “wrong”; then he yammers for a bit on the untenability of thinking that “traditional marriage” in the “Western” sense was an ideal universally acknowledged. But then he pulls the bait-and-switch. It was never an ideal, but it should be. Why? Well, because. It’s good or something. Get the handkerchiefs and blow your noses loudly:
But if we just accept this shift, we’re giving up on one of the great ideas of Western civilization: the celebration of lifelong heterosexual monogamy as a unique and indispensable estate. That ideal is still worth honoring, and still worth striving to preserve. And preserving it ultimately requires some public acknowledgment that heterosexual unions and gay relationships are different: similar in emotional commitment, but distinct both in their challenges and their potential fruit.
Decent sentiments, right? But no one — not Judge Walker, not Ted Olson and David Boies, not anyone involved in bringing these suits to court — thinks there’s anything wrong with “heterosexual monogamy.” We want a chance to try homosexual monogamy. And while we’re on the subject, I’m delighted Douthat thinks the beauty of pledging troth to one partner is “unique and indispensable,” but the law isn’t designed to address Ross Douthat’s ideas about uniqueness and indispensability. The law addresses constitutionality.
Finally, just so his friends on the right don’t think he’s gone mushy, he inserts a parting thrust. Based on Judge Walker’s logic, he writes, “I don’t think a society that declares gay marriage to be a fundamental right will be capable of even entertaining this idea.” That’s right, Ross, no one will play with you. Stand in the corner.
Humanizing The Vacuum 