http://edition.cnn.com/2013/03/29/opinion/waldman-gay-marriage/index.html?hpt=hp_t5
Gay rights opponents' last argument
By Paul Waldman, Special to CNN
March 29, 2013 -- Updated 1402 GMT (2202 HKT)
CNN.com
Editor's note: Paul Waldman is a contributing editor at The American Prospect
and the author of "Being Right Is Not Enough: What Progressives Must Learn From
Conservative Success." Follow him on his blog and on Twitter.
(CNN) -- You may remember the episode of "Seinfeld" in which George Costanza
struggles to find a way to break up with the woman he's dating without hurting
her feelings. "It's not you," he tells her. "It's me."
After decades of saying gay people were depraved and deviant, a bunch of
dangerous predators out to recruit children and destroy families, in the last
few years those opposed to equal rights for gay people have retreated to a very
different message. It's not you, they tell gay Americans. It's us.
It's true that you can still find some people on the fringe who will rail
against homosexuality as an inherent evil. But watch the mainstream debate,
from newspapers to television to the Supreme Court, and what you see are
conservatives arguing that the problem isn't gay people themselves, it's how
straight people are affected by them.
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Opponents of gay marriage want everyone to know that they aren't motivated by
bigotry, only by a concern for straight people with tender feelings and fragile
marriages.
We saw this at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, when Chief Justice John Roberts
tried to argue that the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act wasn't actually motivated
by any disapproval of gay people. He seemed incredulous at the very idea when
it was brought up by the attorneys seeking to overturn DOMA. "So that was the
view of the 84 senators who voted in favor of it and the president who signed
it?" he asked repeatedly. "They were motivated by animus?"
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The chief justice has a short memory. Back in 1996, those pushing for DOMA were
quite forthright about what they thought about gay people. "I come from a
district in Oklahoma who has very profound beliefs that homosexuality is
wrong," said Tom Coburn, now a U.S. Senator and then a member of the House.
"What they believe is, is that homosexuality is immoral, that it is based on
perversion, that it is based on lust... We hear about diversity, but we do not
hear about perversity." His Oklahoma colleague Steve Largent said, "No culture
that has ever embraced homosexuality has survived."
During oral arguments in the DOMA case, Justice Elena Kagan read from a 1996
House Judiciary Committee report on the bill, which said in part, "Civil laws
that permit only heterosexual marriage reflect and honor a collective moral
judgment about human sexuality. This judgment entails both moral disapproval of
homosexuality, and a moral conviction that heterosexuality better comports with
traditional (especially Judeo-Christian) morality."
That kind of rhetoric was common in 1996, but you don't hear it coming from
members of Congress much anymore.
Why shouldn't gay people be allowed to serve openly in the military? The
answer, they say, isn't because gay soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines won't
do their jobs well. It's because the straight ones will feel uncomfortable if
they have to be in close quarters with gay comrades. It's not about gay service
members' performance, it's about the feelings of straight service members (and
if you're wondering why we haven't heard too much about the end of "don't ask,
don't tell," it's because it turned out that straight military personnel could
handle it just fine).
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The marriage debate has followed the same course. Opponents of gay rights used
to argue that gay people were promiscuous and sexually debauched. But when it
turned out that many of them just want to join in stable, permanent family
commitments, that argument no longer made much sense. So now opponents say the
problem isn't the gay marriages themselves, it's the effect those marriages
will have on straight marriages.
What, in particular, will that effect be? Opponents of marriage equality are
having difficulty saying, but it seems they believe that if marriage is
"devalued" by being open to gay couples, straight people will start ignoring
their children, cheating on one another and getting divorced.
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Here again, they have retreated to ground that is increasingly difficult to
defend. They now argue that the only real purpose of marriage is to rear
children biologically related to both parents, a rather pinched definition.
When Justice Kagan asked during oral arguments on Proposition 8 whether, if
that was the case, it would be constitutional for a state to ban anyone over 55
from being married, the attorney defending the initiative said no, because
marriages between older heterosexuals still foster "the marital norm, which
imposes the obligations of fidelity and monogamy," which "make it less likely
that either party to that marriage will engage in irresponsible procreative
conduct outside of that marriage."
In other words, existing marriage laws discourage people from cheating on their
spouses, but if you let gay people get married, the whole country will turn
into an episode of "Desperate Housewives," with husbands and wives jumping in
and out of their neighbors' beds willy-nilly.
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If that sounds ridiculous to you, you're absolutely right. But that's where
"It's not you, it's me" eventually leads. If you want to argue that gay rights
have to be restricted because of how heterosexuals will react, then you end up
saying not only that straight people are frightened of gays and ready to
abandon their spouses at the slightest provocation, but that those personal
feelings and weaknesses deserve legal protection.
At this point, that's about all opponents of gay rights have left. They don't
want to sound like bigots, so they've almost stopped talking about gay people
entirely. It's not you, they say, it's us. Well, they're right about that. Just
maybe not in the way they think.
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Paul Waldman.
© 2013 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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