THE GAY MARRIAGE THREAT BOX

Pretty much everybody except for a rare tribe in the mountains of Dumbfaqistan is aware that David Boies and Ted Olson have teamed up to support gay marriage in our courts. This is not a commentary on the merits of their attempt. It is just a lead in explanation of why it is big, follow-up news that they have won at least an interim victory in the Circuit Court of Appeals on this issue.

It is an absolute rule of nature that, within 20 seconds of any development which advances the cause of gay marriage, the usual suspects will appear on television and discuss how gay marriage threatens traditional, heterosexual marriage.

Stay with me here. I'm not here to extol the desirability in virtue of gay marriage. What I like to see in the discussion of public issues is clarity. When one of these guys says gay marriage is a threat to traditional marriage, I want to know what happens in the "threat box." What is it about two guys being declared married that threatens or interferes with current or future heterosexual marriage. If we're worried that some guy, after marriage, is going to go all Ted Haggard, we need to keep in mind that Teddy is still married to his wife and they both say that their marriage is better and deeper than before. (Ted's the guy who took the "miracle cure" for gayness.)

If the opponents mean that gay marriage will free up guys to go after guys when they might otherwise have married a girl, that is just weaker than weak. If a guy who doesn't like girls actually marries a girl, it doesn't mean he's going to stop liking guys. What kind of a deal is that for the girl he marries? She stays home while he's out with Lance...great.

But the above is me guessing at what is meant by "threat."

As I said, in public issues I like clarity. If you're going to tell me that gay people marrying one another is a threat to "conventional" marriage, it is not my duty to guess at what you mean is actually happening within the actual threat. If that is your position, and that is a perfectly civil and lawful position to take, then you assume the duty to persuade me that there is an actual, rather than theoretical, threat and to explain to me with precision what actually happens in the "threat box."

Oh, for those of you on the dull side or with reading challenges, keep in mind this is something different from taking the position "this should not be allowed because it violates God's law or because it is sinful…" If you take that position, we cannot really have a discussion about it. That is your belief system. You own it. I would not try to talk you out of it.

Just understand that when you make the pragmatic "threat to marriage" argument, you assume the duty to explain the threat. I am not saying it cannot be explained but I've had this discussion with some pretty smart people and so far nobody successfully explained without morphing back into the moral argument (see the above paragraph.)

Good night and God bless United States of America.