Cal Thomas: gay marriage will ruin society

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Cal Thomas, as usual, is on a rhetorical rampage. This time, he's tearing up the advocates of gay marriage, with a shortsighted view of history, loaded assumptions, and all the bluster he can summon. (As an aside, the title--not chosen by Thomas--is "Moral sense lost when personal choice guides decisions." Was it meant to tick off libertarians?) Thomas's words are italicized. Mine are straight.

WASHINGTON - "Dearly beloved, we are gathered together in the sight of God and before these witnesses to join this man and this woman in holy matrimony."

So begins most "traditional" marriage ceremonies in Western culture for as long as anyone can remember.

"For as long as anyone can remember" means "for the past hem-n-haw years," because if you skip back to the time of Moses--you know, Mr. Ten Commandments, source of all Western social righteousness--all of a sudden it's culturally acceptable to have multiple wives. Thomas also limits his moral scope to the West because Right and True are confined geographically....

Now we are told such exclusivity of preserving marriage for men and women "discriminates" against people of the same sex who wish to "marry" each other. Some forms of discrimination are good, because they send a signal and provide an example that certain behavior is to be preferred over other behaviors for the betterment of society.

Finger-quotin' Margo Thomas is admirably frank: being gay is Wrong, ergo allowing gays to be openly gay is Wrong. More on this later.

That a president of the United States would feel compelled, for whatever reason, to make a public statement that marriage should be reserved for men and women is a leading indicator of the moral state of the union.

That Cal Thomas argues in the entire absence of evidence that gay marriage will ruin society is a leading indicator of the moral and intellectual state of Cal Thomas.

Today, right and wrong, an objective concept rooted in unchanging truth, has been dismissed in favor of the imposed rulings of federal judges guided by their own whims and opinion polls (various polls show the country equally split between those who oppose same-sex marriage and those who would allow it). We are now adrift to sort out our choices based on a weather vane principle: whichever way the wind blows is where we'll go.

Thomas dismisses any complex constitutional questions with a wave of the hand, and conflates objective morality with (one particular strand of) Christian morality.

When nothing is either true or false and all decisions about life and morals are based on personal choices and whatever new "trend" happens to capture our attention, we lose our moral sense, which, like an immune system, was established to protect us from cultural as well as biological viruses.

You see, gay marriage is somehow less moral than willy-nilly relationships, gay or straight. People who make a public commitment to remain loyal to the death somehow don't believe in "true or false." Oh, and they're putting us at risk of biological viruses, the only remotely empirical argument Thomas can muster as to why being gay is wrong.

The charge is made that President Bush is "again" using the issue of same-sex marriage to rally his base. But it is not the president who has made this a political issue. Those who would melt the glue of marriage, which has held societies together for millennia, are using the legal and political system for their own ends. In every state where same-sex marriage has been on the ballot, it has been decisively defeated. But like the war in Iraq, the "insurgents" in the culture wars believe all they must do is hang on long enough and the majority will surrender because protracted warfare interferes with our pursuit of pleasure and material consumption.

How will gay marriage "melt the glue of marriage?" We await the argument. (Thomas also forgets himself here, saying that marriage has held "societies together for millennia." Watch out--polygamy is at the back door.)

Some claim that heterosexuals ought to tend to their own marriages before they prohibit people of the same sex from marrying. While it is true that too many heterosexuals divorce (and too many others live together without becoming married), using this as a wedge to undermine a "norm," which, when practiced, serves children and society well, is not a sufficient reason for broadening - and therefore undermining - the traditional definition of what it means to be married.

Ah, so adding people to the club undermines the club. How, Mr. Thomas? How?

Allowing same-sex marriage would be the ultimate in social engineering on a scale even grander than the judicial fiat that brought us abortion on demand. And it won't stop there. People whose beliefs about marriage are founded on religious doctrines can expect lawsuits accusing them of "discrimination" should they refuse to hire someone who is "married" to a person of the same sex. Some countries have enacted or are considering laws that prohibit anyone, including ministers, from publicly stating that homosexual practice is wrong, or a "sin." Remember sin? Sinful is what we were before we became "dysfunctional."

When there is no "no" to any behavior, then there must be "yes" to every behavior. If same-sex "marriage" is allowed, no one will ever be able to say "no" to anything again.

At long last, we have a pseudo-argument. Gay marriage is social engineering, which is inherently bad. Gay marriage will lead to lawsuits against homophobes. Gay marriage is a slippery slope away from legitimizing every possible immoral behavior. Being gay is wrong, something to do with viruses and sin, and discriminating against gays is good social policy. Oh, and the definition of marriage will be undermined in a mysterious and inexplicable way if gays are allowed to marry.

That's the best Thomas can do, and, quite frankly, it stinks.