Older article about liberal hypocracy

SAME-SEX WHAT?!
by Joe Sobran

[Breaker quote: Redefining nature]

Charles Peguy, the French Catholic poet, made what
may be the most prophetic remark of the early twentieth
century: "We shall never know how many acts of cowardice
have been motivated by the fear of appearing not
sufficiently progressive."

That insight explains the faddishness of so much
liberal thought. One might have thought the idea of
"same-sex marriage" was a joke, a reductio ad absurdum of
the continuing campaign to obliterate the idea of the
normal. (As in "Who is to say what is 'normal' for
everyone?") Yet it has become a seriously debated
"issue," and even some conservatives are afraid to argue
against it.

Meanwhile, a single judge in the middle of the
Pacific Ocean has overturned the consensus of Western
civilization: Hawaii is now on the verge of recognizing
"marriages" between members of the same sex. You got a
problem with that?

Cultural liberals are scornful of "old taboos," but
they're always eager to establish and enforce new taboos.
Disapproval of homosexuality is rapidly becoming one of
the new ones. If you say it's a perversion, you will be
accused of "hate," as if you were targeting people rather
than evaluating practices. Liberals never acknowledge
their own hatred of Western traditions; they merely
ascribe their hostility to their "idealism," a motive
their self-congratulation won't allow them to ascribe to
conservatives. (They also claim to be on the side of
science, while holding that science is "value-free.")

So, as usual when liberals control the discussion,
the debate quickly turns into a test of motives. If your
motives are generous, you will approve of same-sex
marriage; if you withhold approval, your motives must be
nasty, and the difference between you and the Ku Klux
Klan is only a matter of degree.

This isn't debate; it's accusation and intimidation.
You can't have a real debate when one side is stigmatized
in advance as bigoted and, heaven help us, "homophobic"
-- a suitably perverse coinage, which basically means
"not sufficiently progressive."

In the case of same-sex marriage, conservatives are
also under special inhibitions. They believe in public
reticence about sex and excretion, so they are
accordingly reluctant to discuss rather obvious clinical
distinctions -- reproductive, sanitary, and olfactory --
between orifices. The best comment I have heard on
same-sex marriage can't be printed in a family newspaper
(and I guess I wouldn't want it to be).

Liberals, for their own reasons, want to discuss
same-sex marriage as a civil-rights issue, without
reference to details of copulation that are central to
the definition of marriage. So the question is discussed
in euphemisms and pale abstractions, just as abortion is.
The details of abortion violate liberal canons of good
taste; we are expected to approve it without saying
exactly what it is. Otherwise we are "not sufficiently
progressive." As a result, our public debates, at
critical junctures, are not only value-free, but pretty
much fact-free.

A few years ago liberalism's bulletin-board
orthodoxy (it changes weekly) held, under the sway of
feminism, that marriage was an evil, outmoded,
patriarchal institution. Besides, what did a "piece of
paper" have to do with love?

Now, it seems, marriage is such a vital institution
that it's cruel to exclude anyone from its joys. And you
exclude people merely by declining to redefine this
ancient institution to suit their tastes. The "right" to
marry means the right to overturn not only tradition, but
common sense.

This position is not just wrong; it's also -- and
this is what makes it somewhat awkward to argue with --
stunningly whimsical. You hardly know whether to refute
it or just wait it out, hoping it will blow over, giving
place to the next morally imperative fad.

Waiting quietly for it to blow over may spare you
liberal censure in the short run. If you keep your mouth
shut, nobody will call you names. But in the meantime you
can't be sure that the judiciary won't do one of its
creative exegetical jobs, discovering same-sex marriage
lurking in the penumbras of our living Constitution.

So far, it's only been discovered in the Hawaiian
constitution. But it may be coming soon to your
neighborhood.

[This column was originally published by Universal Press
Syndicate December 10, 1996.]