How We Lost Marriage

What we know as ‘gay marriage’ is quickly becoming the norm, a dramatic shift from the daring social experiment that, less than ten years ago, enjoyed minimal public support, not even favored by a majority of Californians.

So, where did the defenders of true marriage go wrong?  First, by not asking with a contemptuous groan, when did the left start caring about marriage?  They have, through enacting lax divorce laws, establishing an entitlement subculture that renders fathers obsolete, and social mores that embrace the Playboy Philosophy and radical feminism, decimated marriage — the very institution they are now selling with warm homilies as a right for everyone.  Puh-leez.

This is not a battle for peaceful co-existence, a premise our side has naively accepted.  This is about the marginalization, if not destruction, of marriage.  One rare voice of reason, a Dallas-based pastor, told Bill O’Reilly that when you counterfeit something, you cheapen the original.  Simply, by expanding a given definition, in this case marriage, you dilute the expectation that men will take responsibility for their sexual exploits — after all, a family is whatever social arrangement makes ME happy.  To heck with the continuity of civilization, we are an adolescent, me-centered society.

But with rare exceptions, and much wrangling over legal and legislative technicalities, no one has really made the case that two competing definitions of marriage cannot flourish together.  A prominent, rational voice should have stated that, while men and women will certainly still marry, America will eventually resemble western Europe, with plummeting birth rates, massive immigration to foot the skyrocketing debt and the demise of culture and tradition — if we’re not already there.  Mark Steyn and Pat Buchanan have both brilliantly detailed the decline of the west as a result of (among other factors) sexual amorality and the erosion of Judeo-Christian values.

Sadly, these and other reasoned voices have spent the last decade railing against the debt, immigration, Obamacare and other excess of the Obama Administration.  No single voice emerged to rally support for one of the very foundations of any free (yes, free — are you libertarians listening?) society: an intact family headed by one mother and one father.  Phyllis Schlafly all but single-handedly stopped the Equal Rights Amendment in the 70’s; since 2000, marriage’s most prominent defender was pageant contestant Carrie Prejean (no aspersions against her).  The brilliant author George Gilder, who, also in the 70’s, detailed the necessity of marriage as a linchpin of a civil  society, has spent the last decade or more where he began his public life: economic theory, with a focus on (yawwwn) micro-economics.

And not only has the right been lax, some have been downright complicit.  Former Republican Senators Nancy Kassebaum (KS) and Alan Simpson (WY) have filed briefs in Utah and Oklahoma in support of gay marriage, calling it a fairness and big-tent issue and even invoking the name of — wait till you hear this — Ronald Reagan in their reasoning.

We’re doomed.  Syndicated columnist Jonah Goldberg scoffs at the idea that gay marriage will lead to polygamy and other sordid groupings.  Yet no one has asked Jonah why it wouldn’t.  If it’s all about who I love, who are you to say I can’t love ten people?  Goldberg has stated his opinion that, basically, this nation has bigger problems to face than the definition of marriage.

In truth, the care of children and the examples and expectations we set for upcoming generations are of VITAL importance.  But that case requires too much heavy lifting for those, including self-styled conservatives, who would rather show how open and enlightened and forward-thinking they are.  Just note the tepid support for Arizona’s Religious Freedom bill when it came under massive public assault recently.

In our defense, I can only cite the massive, seemingly insurmountable inertia of art & entertainment and a judiciary and political culture that leans overwhelmingly to the left.  Most traditional-minded Americans are too busy living their lives and simply lack the means to save western civilization that leftists have in destroying it.  Our immunity to lewdness and depravity has evaporated, and many certainly respond to pollsters with “If I tell you I support gay marriage, will you shut up about it?”

Thus the deterioration of Judeo-Christian America continues with only marginal opposition.  Our epitaph will be the same, whether the official cause of death is crimes of commission or crimes of negligent disregard.

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David Bozeman, former Libertarian Party Chairman, is a Liberty Features Syndicated writer.

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