"...there's something more fundamental going on when it comes to certain issues."

You nailed it, Dean. Once people calm down and look at the facts instead of ranting and raving, they might find some kernel of truth. Now some people will always support homosexual "marriage" no matter what others think. But you can't dismiss the fact that most Americans don't support homosexual marriage.

So what is fundamentally going on? Do people "hate homosexuals"? No. They hate seeing something they consider special--the institution of marriage--being trampled on. It gets emotional on both sides, but ranting and raving obscures truth. And believe me, the truth is there.

The Gallup Organization asked Americans in 1983, 1997 and 2002 if they approved or disapproved of marriage between blacks and whites:

Here’s what respondents said in 1983:

Only 43 percent approved!

Racial breakdown:

Whites — 38 percent
Blacks — 71 percent

Here’s what respondents said in 1997:

64 percent approved (an impressive jump in 14 years)

Age and racial breakdown:

Whites — 61 percent approved
Blacks — 77 percent approved

13- to 17-year-olds — 83 percent approved

Here’s what respondents said in 2002:

65 percent approved (only 1% increase — kind of disappointing isn’t it?)

Age breakdown:

18- to 29-year-olds — 86 percent approved
30- to 49-year-olds — 75 percent approved
50- to 64-year-olds — 53 percent approved
65 and older — 30 percent approved

Most people are probably surprised that in 2002 only 65% approved of interracial marriage and that in 1983 MOST Americans did not approve.

It wasn't until 30 years after the Civil Rights Act that popular opinion began to support interracial marriage. Should America have waited until the poll figures indicated that interracial marriage was okay with the majority? I suppose it was wrong for a group of "activist judges" to impose something on the people since a majority of them didn't approve of it.

Ranting about racists during the Civil Rights Movement was probably a bad idea, too. You don't want to offend people. It might make them hate you or something -- hang you from a fence post or burn your house down.

I predict that this fight for gay rights could get very ugly. Right now, the movement is similar to the early years of the Civil Rights Movement -- lots of debate, the same tired rhetoric, and some promise of change. But if change is too slow, you're going to see radical groups similar to the Black Panthers rise up in this country.

This has already happened in the Gay community during the AIDS crisis in the early 1990s. Groups like Queer Nation began planning violent protests and were closely watched by the FBI.

The formation of these radical groups are the inevitable result of oppression. We all need to be concerned about the possible deadly consequences of a constitutional amendment that would turn millions of Americans into second-class citizens. The thing about Arab terrorists is you may be able to recognize them by their appearance. Gay Americans look just like everyone else.

Fritz,

Give gays whatever they want or they'll turn violent? Do you realise how absurd that sounds?

What startled me most was the 37% who opined that gay people are born gay...after twenty years of relentless inculcation of the "born with it" concept, its surprising that only a bit more than a third of the people agree...this does, on the other hand, explain why gay marriage is opposed so broadly...

"The truth" is never out there, because it's always just a concept. And figures aren't facts. They are the numerical results of an incomplete survey of a section of a section of a section... etc. etc., of the population of one country.

'You can't dismiss the fact that most Americans don't support homosexual marriage.' - Two points. One, you can't say that *most* Americans don't support it until you have a nationwide referendum, which hasn't taken place, and therefore your 'most' is hypothetical and not a fact. "Most Americans in this survey" would be accurate. Your statement, as it is, is misleading. Two, if the balance of the population was 51-49 against gay marriage, that would definitely could as 'most' but the real question is: what do you contend that actually *means*? That federal legislation against it should automatically follow? And if so, why? There are plenty of measures that are unpopular with a majority of people in *any* country which are nevertheless law and for good reason.

As far as a lack of 'hating homosexuals' goes, I accept for the sake of argument that you don't hate them personally. But gay people all over the world, let alone your own country, are super-sensitive to all the linguistic and conceptual nuances in an issue like this.

And we tend to notice what you attempt to skim over: 'something they consider special being trampled on' only makes sense if the 'special' is negated *entirely*, and not simply negated, but actively 'trampled on'. Now, for marriage of all things to be attacked so successfully and completely, this has to be one hell of a negative force you're talking about. And since you mention this within the strict context of *gay* marriage, it's reasonable to suppose that your own distinction between 'hating gay people' and a reaction against gay marriage is really splitting hairs. The linguistic difference may be there. But your prejudice shows no less clearly. Making it possible for gay people to marry does not make your marriage gay, your friends' marriage gay... it does not affect your marriage one little bit, it might cause you some moral discomfort but it won't affect your life or send you to hospital or make your cat sick... you see what I'm getting at? Allowing gay people to get married is painted so often to be a big dark gremlin which threatens 'something' in the world that we no longer stop to ask what that 'something' is. The threat to you and your loves and your family and your life and your religion and your beliefs is zero. Enough said.

Um yeah, and the Weather Underground and all other stupid li'l terrorist groups were the result of oppression. That poor KKK! THey were so oppressed!

Anger doesn't entail ranting and raving. And there things to be abgry about like the extortionate extractions by way taxation and many reasons for it like socialist medical schemes and `social security'; repressive `legislation which overthrows the rule of law such as EPA measures. Then, enduring dumbed down schools and teachers imposed by govts.

To attack those rquires reasoned argument.

Then parents, properly, are angered when their children misbehave but don't rant and rave but firmly, controlled, punish with a reprimand or a belting on the behind.

Pyschology and sociology are bogus sciences, quackery, but their influence has been so pervasive that, matched with the ever increasing encroachment of govt. into citizens affairs, that a very large number in the west are nothing but professional mendicants taking all from real taxpayers, that one upshot is the weasley snivelling notion of man inclusive of a puerile notion of happiness and being happy sumed up with banal slogans like, go with the flow.

Sitting there, with a silly juvenile grin when not sanguine at all about things which are not merely offensive but intrusive, amount to real theft of property including in oneself and other such matters is the life of the serf of fantasy, the happy smiling serf.

No better, when there is something worth getting angry about, is to say, don't get angry, just sit back and calmly accept it and discuss, for that is what that amounts to. Anger is a spur to action, to rectify something which one can reasonably rectify. This is in black and white contrast to mobsters like A.N.SW.E.R. whose anger is not anger but hatred of much which makes a civilised world possible, matched by `street peaceful demonstrations' and wreak mayhem as during the `anti-globalism' not demonstrations but what they were riots, with destructionn of property and physical threats, and yes there were assaults against men and women going about their business. Those mobsters justify anger and action against and thus rectifying action agaisnt such vile savages.

Pete,

A few years back, San Francisco voted to refuse contracts to organizations that did not provide domestic-partner benefits equivalent to spousal benefits. The Catholic Church was handling a lot of social services with the aid of City funds. Rather than acknowledge gay unions per se or give up the funds, the Church announced that any one person sharing living space with one of its employees could receive the equivalent of spousal benefits. Sister, mother, grandmother, roommate — it didn't matter.

Now, this wasn't at all popular with the activists who had sought the measure in the first place; their idea was to make the Church either look bigoted and lose its contracts or eat crow and retain them, and instead it managed to be more generous than the law required, while not singling out gay partnerships and putting them on an equal footing with marriage. It's as neat a bit of politics as I've ever seen.

My point is this: The activists weren't really lobbying for benefits for partners of gay employees of the Catholic Church; they were lobbying for recognition of gay partnerships as such — as something akin to marriage, not as something to be lumped in with a bachelor supporting his grandmother or a woman rooming with a college friend. It was the nature of the institution that mattered.

And it's so too with opponents of gay marriage. I happen to support gay marriage myself — I know too many gay couples who are very obviously "mated for life" not to — but to some people it really does mean changing the whole nature of the institution in ways that devalue it. That ought not to be put down immediately to bigotry.

Nobody denies that the majority of Americans don't wish to see gay people married, but that in no way means that the majority of Americans are the religious right. The problem with the gay marriage issue is that it really doesn't effect anyone unless they happen to be gay (and the close family and friends who want their gay loved one to be treated like every other citizen). As an issue that is completely unimportant to most people, it's very easy for the religous right to step in and tell people what "God wants them to think." I mean, how many straight christians are going to go back and see that the original hebrew texts of the old testament and the original greek texts of the new testament are silent on the issue of homosexuality. As a result, the religous right is able to step in and say that everyone should hate gay people, because God hates gay people, and unfortunately, many people will blindly follow.
Like Mark, I am surprised at the number of people who believe that gay people are born gay. After all, with the religous right screeching non-stop that being gay is a choice (yet they never mention when they chose to be stright, but that's probably because many of them aren't), I'm surprised that nearly 40% of people to whom this is a non-issue to have bothered to actually take a peek at a small fraction of the massive amounts of research that indicates a genetic origin.

Dolphin,

Why I'm surprised is that I've never come across anyone in the past 15 years or so who didn't agree that a person is born gay - or, to take a slightly different tack on it, born with the prediliction for homosexuality which environment may then draw out completely; no one I know thinks that being gay is a choice, but the poll shows that 41% think that it is a choice. Very odd - I'd like to see a demographic break-down on that part of the sample.

To take issue with your assertion that gay marriage only affects those who are immediately concerned; this shows a bit of bigotry on your part - you're presumption (prejudice, if you will) is that opposition to gay marriage must be irrational...based, I guess, upon fear and/or hatred. What you've done when you say that is call at least 55% of your fellow citizens benighted bigots because they don't agree with you. You might want to rethink your views.

Michelle,

You hit upon why I changed my views from being in favor of gay marriage to being against...because those who are most strenuously pushing for it aren't doing it to help out misfortunate gay couples who just want to regularise their relationship but, instead, are using it as a handy club to wreck the entire institution of marriage.

Personally, I don't see why the government is legitimately concerned with marriage more than with any other contract, but hey, that's minarchist me. On the original point, I have seen plenty of anti-Christian bigotry, and I'm not a Christian. Two examples from my own dear family. One cousin who is fond of grumbling, "F***in' Christians, ya can't trust 'em." and I'm pretty sure his mom is some sort of Christian. Then my intelligent, thoughtful sister, an MD in NY, "Teh problem with George Bush is that he's a conservative Christian!" Gee. As an athiest, even I can see a) a Christian culture is the best to live in by far b) objections to Christian expression, thought and symbology are as often based in mere bigotry as not.

Well Mark,
I suppose I presume that opposition to gay marriage is irrational because no one has ever put forth a rational argument against it. You'd think if it was all very rational to deny a group of people human rights, SOMEBODY would have put forth a rational argument by now. But so far no one has said more than God thinks it's wrong, it will lead to people marrying cats, the only reason people get married is to pop out kids, and a few other laughable reasonings.
And for the record, I don't think that 55% of the population are bigots, I think 55% of the population have never really considered the issue with any thought (and I'm pretty sure I already said that). However an opinion held by 55% doesn't make it the right opinion. If 55% of the population called for the beheading of the entire RNC, would you jump on the bandwagon to see it happen even though you knew it was wrong?

I favor gay marriage, but I have to say I'm bewildered by anyone who says they have never heard any rational arguments against it. I find many of the arguments completely rational, even thoughtful.

Indeed, it is my central thesis that refusing to look, listen to, and try to understand the rational basis underlying the arguments against gay marriage, gay marriage proponents are doing their cause a great deal of damage. First and foremost, because they're insulting that majority of Americans who oppose it--and are thus alienating the people they should be trying to persuade.

Second, if you don't see the rationality underlying your opponents' arguments, you can't be very effective in addressing them.

Dig harder, dolphin. There are lots of rational arguments on this. Just read Sullivan---one of the reason he's been so effective is because he understands the arguments of his opponents very, very well, and he treats them with respect even as he effectively deconstructs (most) of them so very well.

By 'human right', what do you mean?

Natural rights? Human-given rights (which thus aren't rights, but awards)?

Marriage is a tradition and a privilege. Noone is guaranteed that they will be married to someone some day.

Marriage is not a right. It is an agreement. And a marriage license is recognition of that agreement by the various authorities.

Until people stop trying to call "marrying the person or persons I want to marry" a 'Right' with a capital R, or trying to pretend that discrimination based on readily-apparent, unchangeable physical traits is equivalent to behavior (the miscegnation false argument), and give me something rational to counterargue, how can I make a rational counterargument?

By the way, the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy has lots of good stuff on this, and they make some very powerful arguments about the value of marriage as a social institution and about why changing it may be destructive. They also argue that it's an unnecessary change since gay rights can be protected other ways.

A thing that gay marriage proponents should try to always keep in mind is that we are in the minority on this argument. Treating the majority like they're wrong is okay, but treating them with contempt is more likely to backfire than anything else.

Two items occur to me in this area:

One is that, by operating through courts, the gay-marriage lobby has taken the power away from the people. This is annoying. People who may not be strongly opposed might find a bit of additional resistance by resisting being told what to do without input.
The other is that, from time to time, some gays let slip a word or two that hints there may be an agenda beyond regularising relationships in law.
Some have said that fidelity is a non-starter, given the complicated lives of gay men.
Others continue to hammer, from the liberal side of the culture wars, the concept of marriage, until they need it for some reason. Why, is left for speculation, but there aren't many cheery speculations in that situation.
Remember when marriage was a situation of oppression, supported only by blue-noses and patriarchal domination? Now it's a desperately-needed human right. And, broadly speaking, it's the same bunch saying it.
Sorry for having to state the obvious, but it's hard to shake the feeling that there's more going on than some gay-marriage advocates are insisting is the case. If it were not so, we wouldn't have these discontinuities.

Dean, I have been debating this topic for probably the last 8 years or so (before it was in the news) and I guess when I said "rational" I meant "valid" I was just trying to stick with the words Mark was using. In some ways I can understand the arguements of the other side, though I will never be able to understand all of their arguments. I don't buy the "marriage tradition" argument as there is no set marriage tradition and in fact same-sex marriage have existed throughout various points in history. I also don't buy the slippery slope argument because I don't see a rational way to claim no difference between gay relationships and beastiality as the opposition claims. Most of the other arguments boil down to "we don't want gay people to get married so let's find something they don't have like children and claim it's essential to marriage" while ignoring that many of these characteristics are shared by married heterosexuals. These, mind you are the better arguments I have heard against gay marriage. More often you hear, "Gay people shouldn't get married cuz that's just gross."
Further, I see no rational argument against civil unions. I think that is PURE prejudice.
Also to argue that the change is unnecessary since gay couple can currently spend thousands of dollars in legal bills and obtain a small fraction of the rights granted to straight coupls who simply marry is ridiculous to me as well. Many rights from marriage cannot be attained otherwise and those that can are often weakened severely by the absense of marriage. For instance, a family can break the legal will of an individual if they woudl prefer to gain his assets, even if the will clearly leaves the assets to the individual's partner.
Finalyl I just wanted to comment on Dave's (all too common assertion) that marriage isn't a right. The US Sumpreme Court decided that marriage IS a right in 1967, so these anti-gay factions that are making this claim really ought to be pushing for legislation to make their claim true because as it stands it's a complete lie.

Mark Noonan,

[ . . . ] those who are most strenuously pushing for [gay marriage] aren't doing it to help out misfortunate gay couples who just want to regularise their relationship but, instead, are using it as a handy club to wreck the entire institution of marriage.

Aaack. Not what I was saying at all. My point was that the primary reason gays want to marry is to be married — officially married, recognizably married. The problems of health benefits, hospital visitation rights, inheritance, pensions, &c. are real injustices, but they aren't the main point. The main point is what marriage is.

That's the point for opponents of gay marriage as well. I don't think they are ordinarily bigots; they have a conception of marriage such that allowing same-sex couples into the institution would damage it. I think it would be best for all concerned if the proponents of same-sex marriage could stop treating the opponents as rejected extras from Deliverance, and the opponents could stop claiming that the proponents "really" want to "wreck" the institution they only want to join.

Mark, what would you say to taking the SF Diocese's solution national? You can create a "civil union" with any other person, with the legal ramifications that now attach to marriage. The civil union will not imply a romantic relationship between the parties. There will be no such thing as "civil marriage." If you want to get married, you do it in church. (There could be a provision that a duly witnessed church wedding enacts a civil union between the parties, if you like.)

Michelle,

Wasn't saying you agreed with me, just noting that you hit upon why I changed my mind...I grant that the gay people who want to actually get married are mostly interested in getting married...the people driving the issue though are not at all interested in gay marriage but are very interested in eliminating marriage (and the resultant family) as a pillar of society.

Dolphin,

What the courts ruled in 1967 is that marriage AS UNDERSTOOD was a right not to be denied for something ridiculous as difference of skin color...they were not ruling upon the then-unknown concept of gay marriage...because, in spite of your bold assertions, never until the last few years has anyone even so much as considered gay marriage, let alone carried it out (I'm deeply versed in history - its my strongest suit; I know that I'm dead right on this - bring your evidence, I'll demolish it). Its a new thing, this gay marriage - there is no rulings one way or the other, actually, on it...we're all feeling our way in the dark with no certainty; I only know that as a conservative we are not capable of willy-nilly changing things without inevitibly causing more harm than good...if gay marriage is to come, it can only come via slow societal evolution - most emphatically not by judicial fiat.

Of course we shouldn't go along with 55% of the population if they are wrong - once again, as a conservative I'm highly sensitive to the fact that a count of noses does not give us wisdom...but the fact of 55% believing a certain way is a fact to be dealt with (conservatives are all about dealing with the world as it is - we are the true naturalists; things are as they are and they are to be taken upon their own merits - changed, to be sure, if possible, but always approached upon their own qualities); you can't lightly cast it aside because you think them wrong and, dammit, you're going to get what you want.

Mark,

You are wrong in asserting that no one ever brought up gay marriage until "a few years ago." I don't think the issue came up as early as Loving v. Virginia, but I do remember a George Will column in one of his early collections (so it would be late 70s/early 80s maybe) about an Australian man who claimed to be "married" to an American man and sought to use this as the basis for his own claim to American citizenship. (I must hunt that column up; it was probably a quarter century ago, and it dripped with bile. The George Will of 2004 does not write like that about gay people. A good thing too.)

Mark,

You might want to check out this: http://discover.npr.org/features/feature.jhtml?wfId=1693353

Little audio file talking about the history of gay marriage on that site. I shall agree with you that gay marriage hasn't been a big issue in the U.S. until the past few years, but it has come up in the past.

It's ok guys. Mark hasn't researched the topic that well. Gay marriages have been being fought for in this country for a LONG time, they simply in the last few years have actually become a possisibility and finally a reality. Mark shows his ignorance on the topic by his assertion that gay people want are "very interested in eliminating marriage (and the resultant family) as a pillar of society." This statement is simply hate speech and has no logical basis in reality.

As for same sex marriage in history (and Mark will "demolish" these as he seems to think that he knows everything that has ever happened in the history of the world), Hittite Laws had a special section outlining the way slaves could marry (as under normal cicumstances they could not). In Table 1, Section 36 it says "If a slave gives the bride-price to a free youth and takes him to dwell in his household as spouse, no-one shall [make him] surrender him." Of course it goes without saying that if a slave could take a same-sex individual as a spouse, than so could a free man. I also suppose Mark will be happy to "demolish" the fact of berdaches in Native American cultures, described by Spanish explorer Francisco Lopez de Gomara as "men marry other men" and lesbian marraiges described by Pedro de Magalhaes in The Histories of Brazil as "Each has a woman o serve her, to whom she says she is married, and they treat eachother and speak with each other as man and wife."

I must note that the most ardent and articulate advocates of homosexual marriage are _conservative_ homosexuals like Andrew Sullivan and Jonathan Rauch, who value fidelity and commitment, just as it is the most conservative, most patriotic homosexuals who want to serve in our country's military forces. Leftists have merely reluctantly glommed on to this issue in the name of "equality", just as they did the issue of homosexuals in the military, but they do not really value marriage or the military.

Homosexuals must break with the neo-Communist Left, which does not really value homosexuality (or any sexuality) or homosexuals, and is merely exploiting them (to use a favorite Left word), as is has the Negro, and will readily discard them as soon as convenient.
Example: the "Palestinian" issue. The Israel-haters (Jew-haters) are explicitly on the side of those who murder homosexuals.

Gay marriage may have been fought for a long time, but not by many people. Those who supported it for the past 30 years I respect. But a lot of people are claiming it's OBVIOUSLY a good thing (usually comparing it to equal righs for blacks)even though they didn't say anything at all in favor until very recently. If it's so obvious, it can't be that the just changed their minds, right? So why the quiet for all these decades? Were they selling out to public opinion?

The Johnny-come-latelies (from the Left) to homosexual marriage never valued marriage, they think it's "patriarchal", "oppressive", confining, SQUARE. The Marxists have always put economic issues first. They have merely glommed on to this issue as a means to their end of more equality. It's the SQUARE (conservative) homosexuals who have been for homosexual marriage from the beginning, as well as in the military.

I will have more to say about the "backlash" and those behind it (the Enemy) on my own blog when I'm able.

Quite the contrary, Steven. I'm far from a conservative homosexual and am actually a quite liberal gay man, however I have been arguing for same sex marriage since about the age of 13.