Marriage will be just fine, thanks.
Here's a
New York Times article on the most stalwart marriage equality holdouts among Republican youngfolk. Apparently most of them work for think tanks, too, which is quite the coincidence.
“Proponents of same-sex marriage have done a fantastic job of telling the story of same-sex marriage through music and television and film,” said Eric Teetsel, 29, the executive director of the Manhattan Declaration, which describes itself as a movement of Christians for life, marriage and religious freedom. “I think it’s really a case where once they hear the other side of the issue, and really think about it deeply, we’re going to win a lot of those folks back.”
See, there's your problem. The marriage equality side has
Will and Grace and
Glee and this and that; what crabby conservatives need is some good, uplifting music or tv shows about hating gay people. You could have, say, a sitcom about a group of well-dressed College Republicans who go out and tell other people they're going to hell because they're not playing for Team Babymakerz, and maybe after that they show some gay couple the error of their ways (Oh! It turns out we're not gay after all, we were just confused!) everybody sings a peppy song.
“In redefining marriage to include same-sex couples, what you’re doing is you’re excluding the norm of sexual complementarity,” said Mr. Anderson, the Heritage Foundation fellow. “Once you exclude that norm, the three other norms — which are monogamy, sexual exclusivity and permanency — become optional as well.”
Talk to Newt Gingrich on that one, buddy, I can't help you there. Oh, then there's this (below the fold):
“Most young people think if you come out with traditional marriage views, you’re a bigot,” said Thomas Peters, 27, the communications director for the National Organization for Marriage. “You can’t have that many people in the shadows.”
Yes, the oppressed people are the ones who want to preach to everyone else about how to live their private lives, because it turns out that kinda makes you an asshole, and who knew? Lurking in the shadows, vast numbers of imaginary young wingnuts shiver in the cold—how will they make their loud, pointless outrage known? Will others look down on them? Moral scolds are notoriously tight-lipped with their opinions, after all.
“These Republicans who are jumping ship are doing so because we have no way of messaging,” said Ashley Pratte, 23, the executive director of Cornerstone Policy Research and Cornerstone Action, a New Hampshire group that focuses on social issues. “Do you want to tell your friends when you’re out with them on a Friday night that they can’t get married? No, you don’t want to have that discussion, but you want to have a healthy discussion.”
As every Republican thinks about every single thing, if people don't agree with you it's just because of "messaging." All we need is Frank Luntz to tell us the right words to use when telling a certain class of people they can't have the same legal rights as everyone else, and it'll be fine.
Also, and let me see if I've got this straight here, you're supposedly out on a Friday night with some gay friends, because you actually have gay friends, you see, because just because they're godless sinners doesn't mean you can't all troop down to the local bar on a Friday night and get plastered as Jesus intended, and they bring up that they want to get married and spend the rest of their lives together, and your big issue is gathering up the feel-good courage to tell them that they're wrong and how you really think laws ought to get passed to stop them from doing that, but you want to put it, you know, in a healthy way? Wow.
As the article notes, nearly half of all Republicans 44 or younger think same-sex marriage should be legal, so even among conservatives this fight is in its last throes. It's going to happen. Still seems to be some decent money in writing up think-tank reports on how terrible it is, though.