Regarding his pro-gay marriage column last week.

Since I point out when he’s wrong, I figured he deserves credit when I find us on the same side.

According to this report another Arabic translator is about to be kicked out of the military for being gay.

Because it’s sooo much more important to punish sodomy than to translate Arabic these days.

The bad? Obama’s apparently not taking a stand against don’t ask/don’t tell.

The good? According to an article elsewhere online, he’s said that he’s committed to ending it.

Time will tell, I guess.

AP reports today that activists are already laying plans to challenge Maine’s new gay-marriage law.
The funny part is that when judges “impose” gay marriage, the anti-gay right invariably screams that if gay marriage is going to happen, it should be through the legislative process. Yet when it happens through the legislative process, they scream some more and vow to undo it.
I have a strange suspicion that the process isn’t what really bothers them about this.

During a discussion of gay marriage online, someone posted this excerpt from the dissent in the Mass. case that found in favor of gay marriage:

“As long as marriage is limited to opposite-sex couples who can at least theoretically procreate, society is able to communicate a consistent message to its citizens that marriage is a (normatively) necessary part of their procreative endeavor; that if they are to procreate, then society has endorsed the institution of marriage as the environment for it and for the subsequent rearing of their children; and that benefits are available explicitly to create a supportive and conducive atmosphere for those purposes. If society proceeds similarly to recognize marriages between same-sex couples who cannot procreate, it could be perceived as an abandonment of this claim, and might result in the mistaken view that civil marriage has little to do with procreation: just as the potential of procreation would not be necessary for a marriage to be valid, marriage would not be necessary for optimal procreation and child rearing to occur.”

In other words, if gays get married, people will have more out of wedlock births. Well, of course, doesn’t that make sense!

Conservative columnist and Catholic Rod Dreher on why accepting homosexuality is a bad thing: “People who don’t grasp the power of sex to wreck lives and disassemble a tolerable social order simply aren’t paying attention. You want to see what happens when the only rule guiding people’s sexual behavior is their own desire? Check out inner-city America. You don’t have to be a religious conservative, or any kind of conservative at all, to observe that a permissive sexual ethic is terrible for society, especially for the poor, and for girls.”

So, then, shouldn’t Dreher be a big fan of gay marriage, which, after all, is about two people bonding together rather than running out and doing everyone in sight? Paul did say it was better to marry than burn; I know he wasn’t talking about gays, but if promiscuous sex is bad, as Dreher believes, then surely promoting gay marriage makes sense?

“If homosexuality is legitimized — as distinct from being tolerated, which I generally support — then it represents the culmination of the sexual revolution, the goal of which was to make individual desire the sole legitimate arbiter in defining sexual truth. It is to lock in, and, on a legal front, to codify, a purely contractual, nihilistic view of human sexuality. I believe this would be a profound distortion of what it means to be fully human.”

As Hilzoy points out, being gay or accepting homosexuality doesn’t mean therefore everything goes: Saying a loving homosexual relationship is fine doesn’t mean we have to smile benignly about one person cheating on a devoted spouse, or an Air Force member marrying so they can get a better housing allowance (a friend of mine was a civilian spouse in one such marriage), any more than allowing divorce—which the Catholic Church does not, as far as religious marriages—mean we can’t make judgments about peoples’ conduct (or think that someone’s reason for a divorce is really selfish and shallow).

The past few years, conservatives have enthusiastically invoked the argument that if we allow homosexuality (or gay marriage, depending on the context), then we’re on a slippery slope to where our toddlers will be pressured to have sex with goats. It’s not getting any closer to logical.

National Review pundit Jonah Goldberg: “The U.S. is going to sign on to a U.N. declaration calling for the worldwide decriminalization of homosexuality. I don’t have a problem with decriminalizing homosexuality, at home or abroad, but isn’t there a disconnect somewhere in here? For the last eight years the neo-realist, reality-based, liberal foreign-policy types have been telling us how crazy it is to impose ‘western values’ on foreign or otherwise non-western societies. So why is it ok to impose this very Western value?”

Because the complaint for the past eight years has been about “imposing Western values” at the barrel of a gun. Persuading people to change isn’t quite the same thing as invading and occupying a foreign country.

The American Family Association is shocked and appalled that Swanson (a subsidiary of Campbell’s Soup) actually showed a family enjoying soup. Because the family was (gasp!) two lesbians and their son. Which is terrible, according to AFA’s press release, because “Not only did the ads cost Campbell’s a chunk of money, but they also sent a message that homosexual parents constitute a family and are worthy of support.”

Golly gee shucks, what a terrible message to send. Not.