Here's my Dallas Morning News column on the woebegone situation the GOP is in, and some stark truths it needs to confront to claw its way back. Regular readers of this here blog have heard it all before. But take a look at this passage:
[T]hough it's tough for social conservatives like me to admit it, we've lost the gay marriage battle, especially among the young. We're going to have to come to some sort of accommodation with it to protect religious liberty.
A more precise way to have phrased this would have been to say "we've lost the gay marriage battle because we have lost the young." Obviously Prop 8 was a victory, but demographics don't lie: as older voters die off, so does the most stalwart opposition to gay marriage.
Anyway, get this e-mail I received from an irate member of the Base. It's almost a caricature of right-wing knotheadism:
I'm not interested in what young people have to say. I have no interest in anything those earnest young twerps reciting the mantra of the Obama personality cult have to say. I have no interest in what they tell the pollsters. Young people suck! No really; they do.
To look at what "young people" were doing in 1968, one would have expected the United States to turn into one vast Woodstock Nation now, with pot, pussy, and acid all available for the taking and no recriminations. Obviously, some young people actually do mature as they grow older and they change their attitudes as they mature.
Um, some of the biggest potheads I've known are Republicans. Can't say how popular hallucinogenics are these days, but I think you'll find that the general sexual ethic today looks a lot more like 1968 and 1958. Anyway, I think I can say without fear of contradiction that any political movement that tells young people to get the hell off its lawn is not a political movement that has much of a political future.
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"we've lost the gay marriage battle, especially among the young. We're going to have to come to some sort of accommodation with it to protect religious liberty."
The accommodation has already been made: the domestic partnership laws of California already grant to gay couples the same rights as married couples. Proposition 8 is about keeping the laws of the state neutral on this controversial subject. Religious liberty is safe only if the state remains neutral.
FWIW, I have two children who are Gen X, and one on the cusp with Gen Y. (The youngest is a Millennial.) So we kind of span the generations. They'd all have voted against Prop 8. Indignantly. The one who's married with two children is also the one who has a close friend who's gay, married (to another man), and the adoptive father of a little girl. I think it's too late for them to grow up to be anti-gay rights.
Leta
I am absolutely against rescinding the tax-exempt status of churches that do not sanction same sex marriage. ITA that it should be treated in the exact same way that remarriage is- recognized by some churches, not recognized by others, but the government respects the church's views and stays out of it. I say this because I believe in the First Amendment. Separation of church and state works both ways.
See, people say stuff like this, thinking it's a good idea.
If you are pro-gay-marriage, do not say things like this. It just supports the completely insane idea that forcing churches to perform marriages is even slightly in the realm of rational possibilities.
It's not, it never has been. Duh. Churches have always had the right to marry, or refuse to marry, whomever they want, for whatever reason at all, and it's not even under discussion that they would no long have that right. Example: Religious discrimination is illegal, yet I don't see Catholic churches forced to marry two Jewish people.
It is a literally insane idea invented by opponents to gay marriage with absolutely no idea as to how laws work, extrapolated from the Catholic charities that were doing government work and it was determined they couldn't discriminate in that and still take public money. But performing wedding ceremonies is not an outsourced government job, and churches do not get tax money to do them.
Well, I see MBunge is intent on making war on both biology and logic now:
"There is no such thing as gay marriage. Let me repeat, THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GAY MARRIAGE.... There aren't some people getting married while others get gay married. There's just people getting married. The question is, what is the argument for denying to some what everyone else takes for granted? It's not about inflicting anything on anyone."
Gay people are already allowed to get legally married, just not to members of the same gender. Which is to say, they have the same marriage options as everyone else. So by your logic you shouldn't have any complaint, since if there's no possible such thing as gay "marriage", there's nothing being denied, right?
Alright, back to reality. The goal of the gay "marriage" lobby is specifically to allow them to get "married" gayly, since they already have the option of getting married normally. Or, more specifically, it's to force all of society to recognize and subsidize their gay "marriage", since they already have the option of getting gayly "married" without special legal recognition.
Gay people are already allowed to get legally married, just not to members of the same gender. Which is to say, they have the same marriage options as everyone else. So by your logic you shouldn't have any complaint, since if there's no possible such thing as gay "marriage", there's nothing being denied, right?
Well, if you want to phrase it like that, it's just as logical to argue that it's actually sexual discrimination.
Women cannot marry women. Men can marry women. This is clearly discriminatory against women.
And, no, the fact they each have a group they can marry doesn't mean anything. That's separate but equal, it's like arguing it's okay to bar women from a college as long as they have a women's college to go to. Arguing that they each can marry the opposite sex is exactly the same as arguing that they each can go to their own college.
(And now, for some reason, restrooms are about to be brought into it. The truth is if anyone actually bother to bring a lawsuit arguing that barring them from the opposite gender's restroom was discriminatory, and could show any harm from it, they'd probably win. But no one has ever bothered to do that, cause, frankly, no one cares.)
Incidentally, at least three times my correct captcha has been rejected on posts today. Luckily, I copy posts to the clipboard before posting, but it's very annoying anyway.
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