Word: gays
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...advocates of gay marriage want it to become a reality—and, more importantly, if they want it to last—they need to find new allies. Far-fetched as this may seem, social conservatives may be worth wooing. Of the institutions potentially available to regulate the lives of individual gays, marriage is the most socially conservative institution possible. Many proponents of same-sex marriage apparently believe that, since social conservatives are unlikely to be won over, they will simply have to be strong-armed into putting up with the institution when enough Democrats and enough states have...
...Fewer and fewer Americans believe that gay Americans are gay out of lifestyle choice only. Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama chalk sexual orientation up to some combination of biological and environmental factors. If they are right, then to oppose same-sex marriage is to oppose a societal avenue toward commitment, toward monogamy, and toward maintaining social structures that are in line with mainstream society. Given that a prevailing criticism of gay Americans is that their lifestyles are licentious, then encouraging them to pursue more conservative ends is an appropriate measure to make homosexuality less “objectionable...
...Similar arguments have been set forth by a handful of conservatives, chief among them Andrew Sullivan. Yet Sullivan falls down when he resorts to the argument that gay marriage should be legalized because it will make a great number of gay Americans much happier. Sullivan calls the pursuit of happiness “the birthright of every American.” While this allusion to the Declaration of Independence’s preamble is sweetly sentimental, there is no guaranteed right to happiness in the Constitution (and for good reason). By giving credit to this argument, Sullivan opens...
...While a collective conservative conversion to this pro-gay marriage position may seem far off, it may not be, given how recently gay issues have even entered the political agenda. In 1984, then-presidential hopeful Walter Mondale was said to be courting the “homosexual vote,” as though acknowledging gay Americans as a voting bloc was an innovative strategy. Furthermore, even Mondale, a Democrat, felt he had to straddle the line between opposing gay lifestyles and approving of them, telling his political allies, “The trick is to say you?...
...Proponents of gay marriage will be most effective when they stop alienating social conservatives and opt to highlight the ways in which their own aims are consistent with the latter’s values. It is not an adaptation of aims that is necessary, but rather an adoption of a strategy that privileges consensus over paranoid dogmatism. When this adoption comes to be, the country as a whole will benefit...