20 June 2005

Avedon Carol: On bloody roads

My thanks to John Cole (of Balloon Juice) for bring Russell Shorto's What's Their Real Problem With Gay Marriage? (It's the Gay Part) to my attention. (Single-page link)

But, of course, the Christian activists aren't vague in their opposition. For them, the issue isn't one of civil rights, because the term implies something inherent in the individual -- being black, say, or a woman -- and they deny that homosexuality is inherent. It can't be, because that would mean God had created some people who are damned from birth, morally blackened. This really is the inescapable root of the whole issue, the key to understanding those working against gay marriage as well as the engine driving their vehicle in the larger culture war: the commitment, on the part of a growing number of people, to a variety of religious belief that is so thoroughgoing it permeates every facet of life and thought, that rejects the secular, pluralistic grounding of society and that answers all questions internally.
One thing John and I can agree on is that the anti-gay campaign is from the anti-black playbook with which some of us are so familiar. The arguments are the same, the attitudes are the same, and the willingness to spread hate is the same.

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