Ross Douthat looks at gay marriage and wonders what's love got to do with it

That it's only the thrill

Of boy meeting girl

Opposites attract

- What's Love Got To Do With It (Britten,Lyle)

Ross Douthat is sad. And disheartened. And much like Lili von Schtupp: everything below the waist is probably 'kaput', based upon the historical record.

Ross concedes that the gays have won the marriage wars and now it's all over except for the fabulous weddings that probably won't feature gun cake toppers.

It seems that America has discovered that there is one way that you can keep them down on the farm, and it is by making it legal for people to be gay married in states like Kentucky, Texas, Utah, and Oklahoma. Who needs San Francisco when you've got Tulsa, which is San Francisco without the hills.

Here is Ross throwing in the towel:

IT now seems certain that before too many years elapse, the Supreme Court will be forced to acknowledge the logic of its own jurisprudence on same-sex marriage and redefine marriage to include gay couples in all 50 states.

Once this happens, the national debate essentially will be finished, but the country will remain divided, with a substantial minority of Americans, most of them religious, still committed to the older view of marriage.

So what then? One possibility is that this division will recede into the cultural background, with marriage joining the long list of topics on which Americans disagree without making a political issue out of it.

Well, if recent history is any guide: no.

Roe v Wade has been settled law since 1973, but that hasn't stopped conservatives from continually attempting to set up camp up in America's vast network of uterus-es-es. And I seem to recall a certain conservative columnist still negotiating the terms of surrender thirty-five years after everyone had taken their Ben-Wa balls and gone home. Because, when it comes to issues involving what other people are doing with their junk, conservative religious folks are like a dog with a boner: they just won't leave it alone.

Also, too, if you think that marriage is not a synergistic coupling of  sexual variables for the express purpose of pooping out babies from a vagina Pez dispenser, Ross thinks  that you are setting your sights way too low and your are probably callow and unthinking:

In this scenario, religious conservatives would essentially be left to promote their view of wedlock within their own institutions, as a kind of dissenting subculture emphasizing gender differences and procreation, while the wider culture declares that love and commitment are enough to make a marriage.

Love, hunh!, good God y'all. What is it good for?

Apparently, absolutely nothing when it comes to marriage...

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