MORE DECEPTION

From those wanting to ban gay marriages, civil unions, and domestic partnerships. The so-called “Coalition for Marriage” had to concede yesterday that it had grotesquely misrepresented the results of a Zogby poll it commissioned. Massachusetts is pretty evenly split on a state constitutional amendment, and a tiny majority thinks the legislature should do nothing to prevent gay marriage. The anti-gay coalition skewed the results to make the opposite point. But of course they had to. They are confronting the religious right’s nightmare. When gay marriage gets an actual popular majority, as it soon will in Massachusetts, they won’t be able to hide behind their argument about “judicial activism” and will have to be candid that their real, anti-gay goal. I used to give the anti-gay marriage forces some benefit of the doubt. I believed they were genuinely worried about marriage, not merely interested in stigmatizing gays. (Some, I’m sure, still are; and I don’t mean to impugn their motives.) But look at the National Review’s editorial this week. NR editors want to trash traditional marriage by creating a civil unions structure open to absolutely anyone – gay couples, straight couples, aunts and nephews, college room-mates, bridge partners, whoever. So if you’re a young straight couple considering marriage but unwilling to embrace all the responsibilities, National Review will provide you with an easy alternative. That measure would do more to undermine marriage than anything the pro-gay marriage advocates are supporting, or have ever supported. (My original case for gay marriage was designed specifically to avoid the anti-marriage civil unions option that NR is now endorsing.) In their convoluted amendment, they argue that these other relationships would not undermine marriage because they could not include sex. But how on earth could this be enforced? Videocams in bedrooms? The whole idea is preposterous. NR’s open-ended anyone-can-apply civil unions proposal would be the biggest assault on marriage since no-fault divorce. If they really were concerned about marriage and marriage alone, they’d support a simple, one-sentence amendment restricting marriage to straights, period. But that wouldn’t be enough for the gay-baiters. What’s telling about National Review is that when it comes to two competing principles – protecting marriage and keeping gays marginalized – they pick the latter. not to glean from this that they are animated not by a concern for marriage but by loathing of homosexuality. This is not conservatism. It’s discrimination.