PONNURU PUNTS

Ramesh Ponnuru ducks the central question in National Review’s endorsement of a Constitutional Amendment to ban gay marriage. If NR wants to preserve marriage as an institution, why is it happy to see states create a competing marriage-lite institution, civil unions, for heterosexuals? If the point of social policy is to protect marriage and to increase incentives for marriage (except, of course, for homosexuals), why acquiesce in an institution that will undermine it far more deeply and far more comprehensively than gay marriage ever could? The answer is that this kind of “anyone-can-apply-they-don’t-have-to-have sex” civil union keeps the government from any position condoning or acknowledging gay relationships. That is the bedrock position of NR. Anything but acknowledgment of the dignity and civil equality of gay couples. In NR’s eyes, gay couples are not the civil, moral or spiritual equivalent of straight couples. Britney and Jason are always the moral superiors to a lesbian couple caring for each other for years. You listening, Mary Cheney? That’s what they think of us. So the gay relationship is relegated to the 1950s status of room-mates – where the social right feels more comfortable. This is the fundamental difference. It is motivated entirely by animus for gay couples. You think the religious right was interested in providing civil benefits to straight room-mates before the issue of same-sex marriage came along? You think they were thinking of passing a constitutional amendment to strengthen marriage before the threat of gay equality? The bottom line is that NR’s editors consider gay relationships inferior as a civil matter to straight ones. They think that the most honorable and profound gay relationship is worth less than Britney’s 55 hour marriage. Why cannot they say this? My relationship wth my boyfriend will never be as good as Britney’s to Jason – and it’s worth amending the very constitution to affirm that for ever. Ponnuru may not like conceding this. But it’s true. The fight is between privilege and equality. NR, not for the first time, backs privilege. That’s why gay people and their families will fight this amendment to the very end. Because it’s about writing us out of the meaning of America – for ever.