Did you see the TAC essay by Jon Huntsman in which he claims that gay marriage is a conservative cause? Though I am fine with the position being stated at TAC — I support expanding the conversation on the Right, not keeping it restricted — I think that Huntsman’s view is not at all conservative, except in a limited, but important, sense: at this point, it’s probably prudent.
I presume I don’t need to tell readers of this blog, who have heard it a thousand times, why I oppose same-sex marriage, and why I think it is profoundly un-conservative. I will, however, respond to this part of Huntsman’s piece:
All Americans should be treated equally by the law, whether they marry in a church, another religious institution, or a town hall. This does not mean that any religious group would be forced by the state to recognize relationships that run counter to their conscience. Civil equality is compatible with, and indeed promotes, freedom of conscience.
The second sentence does not follow from the first, and the third sentence is cant. Gov. Huntsman should call Catholic Charities of Boston and ask if it was forced by the state to recognize relationships that run counter to its Catholic conscience, or get out of the adoption business. I have no idea what that third sentence means. If Huntsman thinks gay marriage is going to make it easier for people who dissent from the pro-SSM side to hold and state their beliefs, he might be a crackhead. Seriously, I cannot imagine why he would have said such a thing, unless he’s trying to talk himself into something.
Anyway, the only persuasive conservative argument I can think of for SSM is that it’s coming whether conservatives want it or not, and we had better make our peace with it so we don’t lose ground in other areas we care about. I think this is almost certainly true. As I’ve said in this space before, the gay marriage cause has succeeded so well precisely because it appeals to what people in this culture already believe about marriage. That is, if you believe that marriage is primarily a contractual formalization of the love two people have for each other, and that it has no purpose except expressing the love of that pair for each other, then why should it not be extended to same-sex couples? This is especially true in a culture in which people prize individualism to the extent that ours does, and in a culture that no longer holds to traditional Christian views of sex and sexuality.
Look: When less than half of self-described born-again Christian adults aged 35 and under oppose same-sex marriage, conservatives have a huge problem with this issue. We can’t even hold the most socially conservative part of our own side into the rising generation. How on earth are we supposed to hold the culture?
This is not happening to us out of nowhere. Same-sex marriage is the culmination of several historic cultural forces, and the de-Christianization of the West. (I have a piece about this in the next issue of TAC, so I won’t say more now). I wish it weren’t so, but that’s the world we live in. As a fellow gloomy social conservative said to me today:
Given what people in this civilization think marriage and family are, excluding gays makes no sense, even to ‘conservatives’ under the liberal-contractual order. Marriage is not open to homosexuals under the Christian understanding of marriage. But if we want Christian laws, we have to re-Christianize the civilization.
Is the Republican Party going to do that? Not bloody likely. Politics is the art of the possible, Bismarck said. If those who still want to man the barricades against same-sex marriage can make a case for why succeeding is still possible, I wish they would. Seriously, I’m eager to hear it. But if not, then I wish they would grant that Huntsman probably has the politics for the GOP right on this issue. I don’t like it, but I’d rather deal with the world as it is.
Consequences2 
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Judith 
I want to add on to my earlier comment about Catholics and gay “marriage.”
What gay “marriage” laws do is this: they codify the idea that all 77 million of us are, in the law’s eyes, bigots. We’re allowed to have that bigotry; we’re allowed to preach it, and for now we can teach it to our children without having our children removed from our custody (though that will be a battle front of the future). But the state is essentially branding Catholicism as something that is harmful and inimical to the state’s preferred mode of thinking and acting, and will use its power to keep Catholics from expressing that “harm” in the public sphere in ways that are seen to conflict with the soon-to-be absolute right of gays to feel good about themselves and their sodomy practices, and demand recognition (if not outright praise) from others for them.
Now, John E_o pointed out that not all 77 million of us accept Church teaching on everything or even go to Mass, etc. But that’s a game the liberal state has been playing since before the legalization of abortion on demand. “Good Catholics” or “The Right Sort of Catholics” in the eyes of the state are, to put it plainly, functional heretics when it comes to Church teaching which contradicts with the teachings, values, beliefs and ideologies of the secular state. I would argue that in many places there is already a de facto religious test for Catholics in public office (contrary to the Constitution’s ideas) because *only* Catholics who openly dissent from Church teaching in certain areas are acceptable to serve in those offices. In a post gay “marriage” America that will just be more obvious; Catholics will be able to do various government jobs if, and only if, they openly dissent from Church teaching not only about contraception and abortion, but also on gay “marriage,” the nature and purpose of marriage, the role of the family, and the like.
This will be seen as acceptable because only “bad Catholics” or “the Wrong Sort of Catholics” (defined as Catholics who accept Church teaching and practice the faith) will be barred from various public office positions (as well as, eventually, just about all corporate jobs where the private sector employer has a much greater power to bar “bigots” and “haters” from applying for work).
Which is why, John E_o, if I could afford the compound thing, I still would prefer to spend the money to leave America altogether, following in the grand tradition of the Catholic ancestor who is alleged to have fled from France around the time of the Reign of Terror, and of the Irish Catholic ancestors who preferred to escape British persecution and widespread starvation (and came here to find signs of the doors of prospective employers saying “No Irish Need Apply”). The first step in getting rid of Catholics in a nation is to label them as unwelcome others with strange ideas that conflict with the hegemony the state wishes to achieve, and we’re already well on our way along that path (especially given the rise in casual anti-Catholicism in the media and elsewhere). It has been less than a hundred years since the last time the KKK burned a cross on a Catholic parish’s lawn, after all, and what the New York Times once warned the bishops was a “truce of tolerance” in regard to Americans’ acceptance of the presence of the Catholic Church and Catholic citizens is rapidly coming to an end.
People like Huntsman can wring their hands all they want and ask, “Oh, how can we give up this fight to preserve marriage and jump on the redefinition bandwagon so the cool kids will quit picking on us?” if that’s what they wish to do. People like me, though, are thinking that the state has lost all virtue and all power to protect the virtuous, and so the sooner it collapses the better. Why should anyone have to negotiate with a pack of unchaste liars and thieves to draw up the terms on which they will be forced to surrender their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor? It would be better to admit that we no longer have anything to do with the state, and work on finding ways to protect ourselves.