WHO CHANGED MARRIAGE?

The heterosexuals, of course! Stephanie Coontz will find few dissenters on the social right. The revolution in civil marriage – in which it became about love, not property, in which women and men were equal, in which children were not necessary – all occurred before the gay revolution. Since marriage has already been redefined to make the exclusion of gays logically absurd, the campaign against letting gays into the human family necessarily raises the suspicion of mere animus. It’s not bigotry to say that these are the rules that govern civil marriage and too bad if you can’t live up to them (i.e. procreation, or traditional gender roles). But it is suspicious when you abolish all those rules for straights and then use the old rules to bar gays. I don’t see how gay marriage opponents manage to get round the logic of this – except by resorting to purely religious arguments (which would invalidate most heterosexual marriages today as well), or simply reiterating the definitional case that marriage is for straights, dammit. This glaring hole on the argument must have something to do with the fact that an idea that was novel in the 1980s is now the law in several civilized countries and one state in America. Reason eventually finds a way.

FRUM ON MIERS: Another cold day in hell, but I think David Frum has a point on Harriet Miers. In my occasional interactions with the Bush brigade, I have discovered she is revered as well as feared. Not much of a paper trail; but hard as nails.