Like the Berlin Wall crumbling, or Twitter reaching Iran, the New York marriage decision seems to have prompted major glasnost at NRO. Suddenly there are voices on the subject not given a papal imprimatur. Mike Potemra, leading the charge for a more open debate, imagines "redefining marriage" in the early monarchy of Israel:
I’m just an ordinary Israelite who has an idea for moral reform. Should I try, through nonviolent political persuasion, to convince my fellow Israelites and our King David (blessings be upon him!), of my point of view? Or would this be an attempt on my part to impose a “dictatorship of relativism,” or something even worse — not just a relativist dictatorship, in which I claim that my opinion is equally as good as King David’s, but an absolute dictatorship, in which I claim that my opinion is actually better than King David’s?
At the very least, I would be trying to change society’s clear definition of marriage — as a sacred relationship of a man and a woman and a woman and a woman and a woman and a woman and a woman, and a concubine and a concubine and a concubine and a concubine and a concubine and a concubine and a concubine — in conformity to my own whim. They didn’t have the word Jacobin in ancient Israel, but my brazen view would certainly qualify as something analogous.
And it's one reason I am now regarded as un-conservative, because I did the same thing. But my own position, unlike Mike's imagined one centuries ago, was also shaped by an emergent social reality. Liberated by economic freedom and becoming a critical mass in parts of the country, gay Americans were de facto married anyway, lesbian and gay families already had kids, and AIDS had shown that we needed the broader society and that a ghetto was a fantasy we couldn't afford. My point was that our social arrangements required adjusting to accommodate this new reality, especially when total neglect had led to AIDS. In fact, my point was almost pure Burke: it was to resist foisting a new and untested arrangement, domestic partnerships, on society because they really could undermine marriage. Check out the 1989 original and you will see that the impulse for this was not, on my part, liberal utopianism but Burkean conservatism.
I'm more than glad others now see the point. Gladder still that the Republican party in New York tipped the balance.
The Dish 