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The Arguments for Gay Marriage Are Based on Purposeful Deception

by: tim dunkin | published: 03 31, 2013

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The Left’s favorite go-to “conservative,” Bill O’Reilly, is at it again. Per his modus operandi , O’Reilly was opining about a subject of which he knows little, this time responding to questions about the issue of gay “marriage.” Perfectly fulfilling the stereotype of the out-of-touch, arrogant, flyover-country-hating mediaite that he is, O’Reilly made this observation about the state of the debate on this issue,

“’The compelling argument is on the side of homosexuals,’ O’Reilly said on Fox on Tuesday. ‘That’s where the compelling argument is. ‘We’re Americans. We just want to be treated like everybody else.’ That’s a compelling argument, and to deny that, you have got to have a very strong argument on the other side. The argument on the other side hasn’t been able to do anything but thump the Bible .’”

Statements like this make you want to shake your head in wonder. Is O’Reilly – who is supposed to be informed and competent in the affairs of the day – really so ignorant of the state of the debate about gay marriage? However, he probably is, existing as he does within the same self-contained fact-space bubble as so many of his cohorts in the media.

Indeed, the entire premise of O’Reilly’s argument – and by extension that of many on the cultural Left and in the media – is flawed. The arguments for gay marriage are not, in fact, compelling at all. At best, they are shallow and emotional, only finding wide currency because of the generally low information content of American political discourse as it is “facilitated” by the news media. At worst – and this is what I’m going to be talking about below – the arguments for gay marriage are purposefully, pointedly dishonest, designed to snooker people who often don’t know any better.

In what ways are the arguments for gay marriage dishonest?

Well, let’s first look at the relatively recent meme being pushed by the media that there is a “great upswelling” of support for gay marriage, that there’s been a “sea change” in the views of Americans on this issue, with breathless questioning about “why has gay marriage suddenly found so much support all of a sudden?”

The short answer is that it hasn’t. Supporters of gay marriage point to last week’s Washington Post /ABC poll that found that 58% of Americans now support gay marriage. This is not believable. In fact, it should be a general truism that any poll with a mainstream media outlet attached to it is prima facie non-credible. The media have used spurious, left-leaning polling for years as a way of creating, rather than gauging, public sentiment. It is no different here. The object of this poll, and of the multitude of news stories about the “sea change” on this issue, is to create the very support that supposedly already exists. In essence, the media are trying to generate a “bandwagon” mentality on the part of everyday Americans specifically because they know that the support actually isn’t there , but they want to work hard to try to get it to be. This is something that they do every single time they try to sway the public. Remember when we kept seeing all the stories about how Americans were demanding more and more gun control in the wake of the Aurora and Newtown shootings? Nevertheless, the “facts on the ground” don’t support that narrative – the sale of firearms and ammunition are skyrocketing, the firearms industry is practically the only sector of the economy adding jobs to handle the increased capacity, and congressional Democrats have recently admitted defeat in trying to push a bevy of gun control measures on which they thought they would be coasting to victory using the Newtown tragedy as a prop.

So it is here. The “facts on the ground” just don’t seem to line up with the rhetoric coming out of the newsrooms. Frankly, the gay agenda does not have the general support that its proponents try to say that it has. The outpouring of support for Chick-Fil-A just seven months ago when that company came under attack from the gay lobby points to this. Millions of Americans turned out for Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day – a specific and irrefutable show of support for the company specifically in support of its President’s right to oppose gay marriage. The next week, when the gay lobby tried to organize a counter-protesting “Kiss In” in which lefties could show their disapproval by protesting at Chick-Fil-A restaurants around the country, the event was an abject failure. Indeed, turnout was so bad that its organizers tried to reschedule it so as to give themselves more time to whip up activists to show up.

“Oh yeah,” your average leftist might say, “what about the fact that four states voted for gay marriage on Election Day in 2012?” True enough, they did. And this doesn’t really surprise me a bit. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are a few more that end up approving it. Obviously, there are going to be some states in the union that lean further to the Left than the general run of the population in this country. Washington, Maryland, Maine, and Minnesota are four prominent examples of this type of state – they were before last November, and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. The fact that four left-leaning states either approved (by relatively narrow margins) gay marriage, or refused to amend their constitutions to ban gay marriage (in the case of Minnesota), does not suggest a general groundswell of support nationwide . The main reason that the win-loss record for traditional marriage before November 2012 had been 32-0 was because hithertofore, mostly right-leaning states had voted on it

Indeed, even in these states, gay marriage actually ran behind the vote for the left-leaning Presidential candidates (Obama, of course, but also the smaller Left parties like the Greens).

· In Maryland, gay marriage was approved 52%-48%, while the combination of support for Obama and the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein (included because you can be pretty certain that almost all Green Party voters also support gay marriage), totaled 62.6%. In Maryland, gay marriage got roughly 436,000 fewer votes than the left-leaning presidential candidates.

· In Washington, gay marriage was passed 53%-47%. Meanwhile, the left-leaning presidential candidates got 56.5%. Gay marriage got approximately 249,000 fewer votes than the left-leaning candidates.

· In Maine, gay marriage won 53%-47%, while Obama and the other left-leaners got 57.7%. Gay marriage got a little over 43,000 fewer votes than the left-wing candidates did.

· In Minnesota, voters refused to approve a constitutional amendment defining marriage as one man and one woman by a margin of 51%-49%. At the same time, Obama and the other lefties got 53.1% of the vote. Gay marriage got around 43,000 fewer votes than Obama and the Green Party combined.

What does this all mean? It means that despite the media-driven image of the popularity of gay marriage, supposedly shown by the handful of states that approved it in November, support for gay marriage actually ran behind support for Barack Obama and the Green Party (and if you remove the Green Party, the numbers are still pretty much the same, since that Party garners such small vote tallies). Indeed, gay marriage seems to run anywhere from 2-10% behind the Left at the national level. This fits well with other data points, such as North Carolina’s approval less than a year ago of an amendment to the constitution that bans gay marriage, as well as also refusing to recognize same-sex civil unions from other states (i.e. an even more hard-line measure than merely defining traditional marriage). The amendment passed with 61% of the vote; only 39% of the state voted against it (i.e. for gay marriage). In contrast, Obama got 48.4% of the vote a few months later, giving gay marriage over a 10% deficit.

Maine is the only state that has actually switched positions on this issue, voters narrowly approving it whereas a few years before it has been banned by a slight majority. Of course, at least one state where gay marriage is legal – Iowa – by judicial fiat seems like it would like for this not to have happened. Indeed, voters in that state took the very next opportunity they had to turn out of office the judges who had imposed it on the state.

Contrary to what the media would have us believe, the opinions of people in aggregate do not actually swing wildly one way or the other in such short periods of time. The opinions of the people as a whole obviously can and do change, and I have no doubt that there has been some movement towards support for gay marriage in this nation versus where we were one, two, three decades ago. But to propose that nearly six in ten people in this country suddenly, like a thunderbolt, out of the blue, support gay marriage where majorities were opposed even in 2003 is a bit credulous.

What about all of these Republicans suddenly coming out for gay marriage? Well again, look at them. Rob Portman – has a gay son. Dick Cheney – has a lesbian daughter. Most of these Republicans are from the “establishment” wing of the Party, many were already known “moderates,” and many of them were probably already “silent” supporters of it anywise. They don’t represent a sea change, so much as just a change in volume. Indeed, if there were really these huge numbers of Republicans shifting on this issue in recent years, that would be reflected in the actual vote totals as well. If anything, the vote deficits for gay marriage versus Obama suggest that there is a sizeable bloc of Democrat voters who are not supporting their Party’s social agenda on this issue.

Another specious argument – one designed to simultaneously cow opponents into silence while arrogating a false moral high ground to themselves – is the one in which gay marriage supporters repeatedly accuse traditional marriage supporters of “hate.” Frankly, I don’t think a more anti-intellectual argument could be made by gay marriage supporters. It’s anti-intellectual because the whole intent of this argument is to get around , rather than face up to, the actual and multitudinous reasons why opponents of gay marriage hold to the position they do. It’s so much easier to simply lump together everyone from Evangelical Christians and traditional Catholics to secular pro-natalists and conservative atheists (and yes, I know of quite a number of atheists, and several young ones at that, who oppose the imposition of same-sex marriage onto the country) and paint them all as if they were one with Westboro “Baptist” church. While I’m sure there are some anti-gay marriage people who genuine hate homosexuals (just as there are some homosexuals and others on the Left who genuine hate conservatives and Christians, by the way), to pretend that animus is the motivating factor for all, or even for most, traditional marriage supporters who have given numerous reasons besides hate for why they believe as they do is silly and unthinking. It defies the whole intention of the democratic system, which theoretically exists so that issues on which there is disagreement can be openly and honestly discussed in the marketplace of ideas. Simply dismissing all the actual arguments your opponents make, and attributing their position uniformly to “hate,” is dishonest. It’s really as simple as that. If you make the “hate” argument against tradition marriage supporters, then you are not an honest or reasonable person.

Now, on to some of the more technical arguments. Much of the rhetoric for gay marriage rests on the notion that gay marriage is necessary “for people to be equal.” “Everyone should have equal rights,” goes the slogan. What this argument ignores, however, is that gays already have equal rights – including equal marital rights. Any gay man can marry any woman who will agree to it, just as with any straight man. Any lesbian can marry a man who will have her, just like any straight woman. The pool of people that gays can marry is exactly the same as that for straights. You may complain that this still doesn’t mean that they can marry “who they love” (more on this argument below), but the simple, on-the-table fact is that gays already have equal marital rights with straights. So the technical claim that support for gay marriage is about “equal rights” is not correct.

Okay, so you say that gays still can’t “marry who they love.” Fair enough. But then again, there are also people who love people who are already married, or who are 13 years old, and so forth. This doesn’t mean we should extend marriage to accept polygamy or child marriage. And this, ultimately, brings us around to what it really at issue – it’s not about “equal rights,” but about whether we’re going to change the definition of marriage. Marriage is currently defined, by God, by law, and by dictionary, as the union of one man and one woman. That is marriage – and that only is marriage. Gay people can engage it in the same way and to the same extent that anyone else can, which is why the Supreme Court has already previously ruled in the past that statutes which affirm traditional marriage and deny same-sex marriage do not violate the Equal Protection and Full Faith and Credit clauses of the Constitution. The lack of same-sex marriage does not, in fact, present an undue imposition on gays being able to access marriage as an institution .

Of course, this then raises the issue of whether it is reasonable and good policy to go around making sweeping social changes – and let’s face it, marriage is pretty foundational to our society, and the decay of marriage as an institution has had undeniable, massive effects on everything from public health to public safety to public finance in recent decades - simply to satisfy the particular affections of a very small percentage of the population. If it’s unfair to gays to not change the definition of marriage to include same-sex marriage because some people want it, then is it unfair to the Fundamentalist LDSers down in Texas to not start letting 50 year old men marry 12 year old girls? Is it unfair to people who don’t own property to not change the law to allow them to squat at will on the property of others? Is it unfair to people who only get paid $10.00 an hour to not pass a law that forces employers to start paying them $20.00? That’s the problem when you start calling anything and everything a “right” regardless of whether it is an inhering, natural right or not – everybody who doesn’t like it that they can’t do this or that or the other, however socially detrimental or peculiar to their own circumstance, wants special laws made to specifically benefit them and their particular group. At that point, you don’t even have a social fabric anymore. You just have a bunch of atomized, competing power groups who have no sense of social cohesion beyond the “tribe” they belong to, and who think everybody else owes them whatever they want, when they want it.

No thanks.

Finally, probably one of the most disingenuous aspects of the gay marriage push is the fact that many of those seeking to have it implemented by law really have no actual interest in marriage, per se . For instance, S.E. Cupp – herself a “conservative” lesbian who has long argued that Republicans and conservatives should embrace, rather than reject, gay marriage – has noted with dismay that many in the LGBT movement, as well as others on the Left, actually are not enthusiastic about gay marriage as a long-term prospect...specifically because they want to see the institution of marriage abolished as “regressive” and “socially divise.” The ultimate goal of many of these activists is not to make marriage “inclusive,” but to make it disappear. For many of these activists in the gay marriage movement, arguing for “equal rights” is just a way to snow people into supporting the next increment in the eventual move to destroy marriage altogether. For many of those pushing for gay marriage, it's not about “marital equality,” but about the exercise of raw political power to force your particular agenda off onto an unwilling public.

Indeed, if we want to talk about “equal rights,” then those who support gay marriage need to recognize the fact that when the gay agenda is implemented, everyone else loses freedom. Let me state this another way – liberty and genuine freedom cannot co-exist with the extension of special rights and statuses to homosexuals (or anyone else, for that matter).

This is a very real concern, too. Even John Kass, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune who supports same-sex marriage, observes that the rush to implement gay marriage is likely to result in a loss of religious freedom for those who disagree. That this is likely to happen if gay marriage is generally imposed is not just theoretical. In fact, it has already happened in Canada, as noted by Bradley Miller. In Canada, where same-sex marriage was imposed ten years ago, there has been a significant loss of religious freedom, freedom of speech, and freedom of association. Even expressing disagreement with homosexuality can land you in the dock before a “human rights tribunal.” Churches can be sanctioned for refusing to marry homosexuals (to each other). Companies are forced to accept gays as customers, whether they want to or not. This already happens in the USA, as well. In several states, wedding photographers and caterers have been prosecuted for refusing to cater or serve homosexual civil unions against their own consciences. The same state of affairs exists in European countries, as well as places like Brazil, that have adopted gay marriage and other significant elements of the gay agenda. Indeed, in Brazil, the socialist government has criminalized any criticism of homosexuality at all.

Now, your typical liberal might say, “So what? People ought to HAVE to serve everybody! People shouldn't be allowed to say things that make other people feel bad or uncomfortable!” Oh really? If you're a liberal who actually tries to make that argument, are you serious? Ever heard of a little thing called “The First Amendment”? You know, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and all that?

In many ways, those who are arguing for gay marriage are arguing for the eventual implementation of a social system in which people who don't believe the right way or say the right things will lose their freedoms of speech, association, and religious conscience. Again, no thanks. I think that actual constitutional rights held by all should trump special “rights” (really, government imposed privileges) granted to a few. Again, I would emphasize that this concern isn't just “paranoia,” it is empirical fact . It already happens, in every place where gay marriage has been implemented. In short, you simply cannot credibly claim to support liberty while supporting gay marriage. They are incompatible concepts due to the circumstances that apparently surround governmental approaches to favoring gays over anyone who disagrees with their agenda.

Contrast this with the present state of affairs in the USA where gays have all of the same constitutional rights as straights – gays can be whatever religion (or none at all) that they choose, they can say what they want, print what they want, own a firearm like anyone else, be protected from unreasonable searches and seizures, access trials by jury, etc. Again – gays already have equal rights. Implementing gay marriage is likely to reduce, rather than extend, freedom in the United States of America.

In summation, the case for gay marriage is not really as one-sided as its proponents like to think. Indeed, if our nation were to really sit down and get serious about having an actual reasoned, intellectual debate about gay marriage, the case for it would likely not fare well at all. Granted, this is not likely to happen for so long as the “debate” remains entirely within the realm of media talking heads, politician, and other people who are completely out of touch with middle America. However, in the interests of reviving the spirit of public debate and reasoned discourse, far from “shutting up” about gay marriage, conservatives and liberty lovers need to get aggressive about puncturing the false narrative and demanding that Americans start thinking more deeply about this issue.