Repeal Proposition 8

The recriminations over the passing of California’s Proposition 8 roll on. The fact that the Mormon Church was central to funding the campaign in favour of the anti-gay marriage law has meant it has become the target of the ire of many gay rights campaigners. I saw this photo on Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish:


Look at the sign of the woman on the right – both very witty and a plaintive cry at the same time.

The more I think about the issue of gay marriage, the more angry I get at those who want to stop it because the less I can understand their position - at least in the liberal democracies of the world where we claim to believe in civil rights. What consenting adults do amongst themselves when it has absolutely no impact on anyone else seems to be completely their own business. Yet the moralising right, normally so keen on getting “government out of peoples’ way” suddenly want to stick it straight back in front of them again if those people happen to be two men or two women who want to spend their lives together. The idea that this some how threaten the stability of society just seems a farcical argument to make with out the psychological explanation that the person making it has homosexual feelings themselves that they are trying not to act on. I just do not understand how two men getting married has any impact on my life at all – I am straight in the same way that I am five foot ten. I can hang out with tall people all I like, but I’m not going to start growing. Instead, letting gay people marry seems essentially a small-c conservative thing to do. It accepts the rather boring social fact that when two people who love each want to make a public commitment of fidelity to each other, this is a stable and relatively successful way for society to work.