Your Marriage Will Be Impacted By Marriage

I'm watching Maggie Gallagher on MSNBC arguing that same-sex marriage will impact your marriage because it's the government defining marriage and that's bad for marriage. She also wrote this piece on same-sex marriage, beginning with this line:

Last week, the Iowa supreme court found a constitutional right to gay marriage, rejecting the arguments for marriage accepted by the state supreme courts of New York, Maryland, and Washington.

They found a right to marriage by rejecting arguments for marriage. Please excuse me while I sift through this pile of goo for a point.

The core of Gallagher's argument is that government regulation protecting the rights of gays and lesbians will interfere with the right of churches to discriminate against this protected class of citizens. As much as I want to give lip service to the idea of religious liberties, part of me doesn't give a shit and just wishes they would move into the 21st century. From a legal perspective, I'm fine with religious protection clauses, as it will likely serve to marginalize bigoted institutions rather than empower them over the long run, eventually giving them the same status as country clubs which reserves the right to refuse blacks and Jews.

But this shows you just how far the front line of marriage rights has moved in a short time - the argument against same-sex marriage is virtually incomprehensible at this point, instead moving to making villains of gays because it's making the bigots' lives worse. Imagine an ad in 1965 declaring that the Negroes got civil rights by rejecting the courts' holding on equal rights, then they started casting for California restauranteurs and Mississippi bus drivers whose lives were ruined by uppity blacks. I think it's where we're going to be in a decade or so, hopefully without the feared gay riots destroying our suburbs and walkable shopping malls.