“Your reaction to the NR editorial on gay marriage reminded me of something I have often thought about those arguments. Some social conservatives try very hard to come up with reasons for opposing gay marriage WITHOUT implying any moral disapproval of homosexuality; but that has always struck me as madness. You can’t, in making a law, simply concentrate on social consequences and ignore whether the law is fair to the people involved. You can see this whenever somebody who defends a gay marriage ban on procreation grounds responds to the suggestion of outlawing marriage for the infertile. It might be an interesting idea as far as stabilizing marriages, encouraging traditional families, etc., but it is so obviously, monstrously unfair to innocent people that it is never seriously considered. Why don’t homosexuals get that consideration?
Similarly, I remember a defender of gay marriage (I don’t remember who, and I’m going to maul this quote, but the sense of it is right) responding to an argument about higher levels of homosexual infidelity by saying “Why not allow just lesbians (who are on average much more faithful) to marry?” I don’t think he got an answer, but there is an obvious one: to allow marriage to lesbians and not gay men would be absurdly inconsistent and unfair: no one really believes that one type of homosexual relationship is more reprehensible than another (as far as I know), and to draw such a vital distinction between them for the sake of the general well-being of society is an idea that would seem deeply wrong to most sensible people. But, if we don’t condemn homosexuality in general as a sin, there is the same problem with allowing marriage to heterosexuals and not homosexuals. I don’t think it’s possible to ignore that unfairness without believing that gays somehow deserve it, or at least that their interests deserve less consideration.” That nails it, I think. Has it ever occurred to the editors of National Review that gay citizens deserve fairness?
The Dish 