So what is the executive summary? Is gay marriage an oxymoron or what?

Can anyone sum up David Frum's position without having to watch the video?

When people say "support," I suspect they mean "Support the right" to marry, right?

In many instances support does mean require. For instance, the Supreme Court requires that abortion be legal everywhere in the United States. Conservatives rightly fear that the Supreme Court would do the same with SSM.

We still do not have a SSM statute in this country enacted by a state legislature and signed by a governor.

I know a very prominent lawprof conservative, not especially an economic conservative, really a social conservative though not in the culture wars sense, who favors gay marriage.

His theory is that marriage is a great, conservative institution. Expanding its reach is therefore a good conservative policy.

"Unfortunately, to many, support means, "require."

Oh darn it. Someone must have leaked the memo. But now that the cat's outta the bag, yes, our objective is to require that all couple be same sex. It's the only way to truly destroy marriage, which is the ultimate goal, of course.

"If you're an economic conservative, there are any number of reasons to support same sex marriage."

Surprisingly, there are quite a few conservatives who are gay. And they support SSM.

I know, I know. Gay republicans? I don't get it either...

HL, Vermont has a civil union bill, passed by the legislature and signed by Howard Dean.

Tomh, you hit it right on the nose.

It seems to me that opposition to gay marriage carries more symbolic value than anything else. Ditto support for gay marriage over, say, civil unions that included federal benefits. Perhaps this explains why more pragmatic politicians simply settle on the compromise of civil unions and remain unconcerned about the word value of marriage. But I digress...

...because I want to address the idea that somehow marriage will make any of us, gay or straight, more sexually conservative. Does anyone believe this to be true? I no more believe gay marriage will end bathhouse culture than I believe strengthening straight marriages will end prostitution or strip clubs. Maybe it will curb individual behavior, but significantly? Or at least to the point where we notice a change?

Behaviors and habits in the gay male community are pretty deeply engrained. No surprise; sodomy laws were only eliminated in 2003 and gay men are one of the few social groups routinely demonized by name in popular culture and polite circles. Furtive sexual encounters thrive in that kind of climate.

Most conservative opposition to gay marriage is actually opposition to homosexuality, not support of traditional marriage, a term that has lost all meaning in an era of high divorce and adultery. Similarly, proponents of gay marriage and civil unions have to realize that many gay couples do not have the same view of monogamy that their heterosexual counterparts purport to have in theory. I have yet to see a different approach that is not demographically or intellectually dishonest.

I think Andrew Sullivan tried to make a conservative argument for gay marriage ... though I never quite bought it. Why should I, as a member of the community, be interested in supporting the monogamy of homosexuals?

Why should I, as a member of the community, be interested in supporting the monogamy of homosexuals?

So you are indifferent as to whether homosexuals are monogamous or promiscuous?

We can gay men can marry any ole whore, as long as she's a female.

Not quite right. You can't marry [censored] if she is currently married to someone else, if she is your sister, if she is your daughter, mother, etc. There are rules that apply equally to everyone. Equal rights.

The ERA didn't pass. Law can distinguish between the sexes.

But if I want to marry the one person I really want to marry, I can't.

Neither can the next guy. Equal rights.

I suppose Loving v. Virginia was wrongly decided then. After all, it conferred equal rights on blacks and whites.

Oren,

I think the law should be colorblind, so Loving v. Virginia was rightly decided. Imagine a set of law that did not contain the words "black people" and "white people" It is easy if you try.

I think the law would be pretty stupid if it were sex-blind, pretending there is no difference between men and women. Imagine a set of law that did not contain "man" or "woman" anywhere within it. Is that a functional body of law?

The law is wrong to make distinctions based on skin color, but not wrong to make distinctions between the sexes. The ERA didn't pass.

The law for everyone should be something like "you may marry any consenting adult who is of the opposite sex, not a close relative, and who is not currently married."

Same rules for everybody.

I think it's great that IB Bill clings tenaciously to the one argument that cannot hold--the definitional one. Now that in Massuchusetts and a handful of countries around the globe, male-male and female-female couples are married--under the law; in the eyes of their families, friends, colleagues and communities; many of them in their churches; and in the eyes of their god as they understand him; some of them raising children--those who cling to the definitional argument look like people with their fingers in their ears, singing loudly so they don't hear something they don't want to believe is true. As the number of married same-sex couples grow, those who whip out a dictionary--whether Webster's or a Natural Law dictionary--to incant the definitional spell that conjures these living, breathing married same-sex couples into nonexistence will look increasingly like flat-Earthers on a quest to prove the existence of phlogiston.