MAGGIE ON MARRIAGE….At the risk of butting in on Kieran’s territory, I decided to go read Maggie Gallagher’s complete week of guest blogging over at the Volokh Conspiracy to see if I could figure out why she’s so violently opposed to same-sex marriage. Clearly she thinks that SSM will have disastrous effects on the institution of marriage, but it turns out that she managed to write several thousand words over the course of five days without ever explaining why she thinks that. “Bad time management,” she explains. Here’s the closest she comes:
If the principle behind SSM is institutionalized in law…then people like me who think marriage is the union of husband and wife importantly related to the idea that children need moms and dads will be treated in society and at law like bigots.
I promise that this isn’t mockery or an attempt to miss her point. Out of all the posts she wrote, this was the best she could do. She’s afraid that if society comes to accept SSM, then people who dislike it will be marginalized.
Well, I suppose that’s true. And it’s especially true if they can’t actually verbalize their reasons for opposing it in the first place. And I’m afraid this won’t do either:
Imagine you stand in the middle of vast, hostile desert. A camel is your only means of transversing it, your lifeline to the future. The camel is burdened ? stumbling, loaded down, tired; enfeebled ? the conditions of the modern life are clearly not favorable to it. But still it?s your only hope, because to get across that desert you need a camel.
Now, chop off its legs and order it to carry you to safety.
That?s what SSM looks like, to me.
I dunno. That’s what a camel snuff film looks like to me, but not much else. I think this argument needs some work.
