Matt Yglesias

Dreher: You Are Nihilists, You Believe in Nothing

Via Ta-Nehisi Coates and Hilzoy, Rod Dreher offers his views on the stakes in delegitimizing homosexuality:

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. And I fully expect to lose this argument in the main, because even most conservatives today don’t fully grasp how the logic of what we’ve already conceded as a result of being modern leads to this end.

Well, I agree with Dreher that he’s going to lose this argument. But drawing the red lines around homosexuality seems mighty arbitrary to me. The front lines of the gay rights movement, after all, are at this point about the right to marry rather than the right to have sex, which has basically been conceded. It’s an effort to find social and legal legitimacy for the aspects of a loving sexual relationship that go beyond “nihilistic” desire. Alternatively, if the view is that the only alternative to a nihilistic view of sexuality is a narrow focus on reproduction, then the horse got out of the barn a long time ago with contraceptives.

In other words, even given Dreher’s strongly conservative premises, continued discrimination against gays and lesbians still looks mighty arbitrary and unfair. Basically, conservatives know they can’t enforce their preferences on the heterosexual majority, so they’ll pick on the gay minority instead. It’s as if I were to say that eliminating the home mortgage interest tax deduction only for Asian-American homeowners was a good second-best to my preferred, but infeasible, policy of eliminating it altogether.

Pansy Division

Newt Gingrich warns that “gay and secular fascism” is a “very serious threat”:

I can’t believe this joke is making a political comeback. But I suppose if Liberal Fascism can be a best-seller, more and more conservatives are going to hop on the “let’s call everyone fascists” bandwagon.

Gay Marriage

Jim Henley recounts a conversation with his daughter:

The Littlest Offering, Age 8: What’s that about?

Me: It’s a commercial opposing Proposition 8 in California, which would make it illegal for gay people to get married.

TLO: But that’s an insult to Mary Gay and Vicki! (My stepsisters-in-law in Illinois.)

Me: Yes. And Uncle Tony. (My brother-in-law’s brother in McLean.)

TLO: And Bailey’s dads! (Bailey is a fellow Brownie.)

Me: Yeah, them too.

Jim recounts, “I would never tell you that eight-year-olds possess some inherent wisdom that grownups must always heed, but whenever I hear people complain that a problem with gay marriage is, us regular people just can’t explain it to our kids, I have to ask, what’s so complicated about the concept? Also, my daughter does recognize the human costs of marriage restriction on people she knows and loves.”

Indeed. My upbringing on 12th Street in Manhattan rarely provides me with important insights, but it was like growing up in the future in terms of social acceptance of gays and lesbians. If you’re not acclimated to prevailing discriminatory norms from a very young age, it’s actually very confusing to have them explained to you. There’s no obvious reason to a child that some substantial minority of couples shouldn’t be same sex.

Palin for FMA

One issue on which John McCain is no George W. Bush is the question of a Federal Marriage Amendment that would prevent states from granting equal marriage rights to gay and lesbian couples. Bush is for it, McCain is against it. And now it seems Palin is for it:

Normally a VP nominee would avoid contradicting the top of the ticket, but perhaps this is pre-positioning for 2012.