This is why Westboro Baptist Church is a joke

[Jester]

Societal norms, traditions, and institutions do not have human rights. To be opposed to them might be good or bad, but it isn't bigoted. To be opposed to peoples' rights, simply on the basis of some arbitrary fact about them (gender, race, sexuality), to say that they should not enjoy the freedoms enjoyed by others entirely on that basis, is bigoted, and is so regardless of the reasons.

Well, you know my position. If somehow politicians could get to dismantling the centuries of commingling "marriage" with law, then I would support them in that effort. I support the rights of people to practice their faith without interference by the government when those practices don't trample other basic rights. People don't have the right to marriage. It is a religious sacrament, bestowed by a clergy member of a church. When the state gets involved, what it does is a legal process. So, where the difficulty lies is in confusing the state thing with the religious thing. Everybody has the right to the state thing, and it would be less of an issue if they just called it "Civil Union" for everyone. But, I think there is a political goal by some on the left too, which is to tear down religion, tradition, and social norms. So both sides will struggle until everyone is covered in mud, and no one is happy with the outcome.

I agree that the first-best solution is simply to remove government from the marriage business altogether. There is no reason for the state to be involved at all.

However, if we are to live in a second-best world, where marriages are recognized (or not!) by the government, then it is hopeless to try and maintain that "People don't have a right to marriage." Of course they do. Tremendous legal and economic rights flow from marriages. Tax exemptions. The right not to incriminate each other. Benefits of all kinds, flowing from this *legal* institution. And to deny it to gays who, in all other meaningful respects are in the same situation, who demand these rights as strenuously as Douglass once demanded the rights of slaves, as Pankhurst once demanded the rights of women? Bigotry, no matter how much lipstick you put on the pig.

I think your view of the left is an absurd caricature - few if any people want to "tear down religion, tradition, and social norms" for the heck of it. What they do is question the value of our inherited norms, and ask if we could improve them. Slavery was once a tradition, indeed, a religious tradition. Should we have kept it? Do we describe Lincoln as a man who "tore down tradition?" I would think not. He presided over a colossal struggle, that didn't just "leave both sides covered in mud," but cost hundreds of thousands of lives and nearly tore the United States to pieces. Still, seems worth it, to me. Some things, you fight for.

Well, it was hardly him alone. A litany of prominent democrats voted 'yea' to get it to his desk. And... you notice how prominently it is featured in our debates now. Not. It might resurface as a political ping-pong ball during election season to fire up the base, but it will likely get buried again once the kerfuffle settles.

A litany of prominent Democrats and practically every last Republican.* But yes: these people are bigots. That he was very, very far from being alone just tells you how pervasive anti-gay bigotry was at the time - it is better now, but not good, not by a long shot.

Now, if there was a prominent Republican candidate who endorsed gays' right to marry? Or even offered a moderately gay-friendly platform? Now that would be news.

-Jester

*a quick scan shows: Every last Republican senator, and all Republican congressmen bar one - Steve Gunderson, for fairly obvious reasons - voted yea or abstained.