JMH –
Re: “-a family court system so hostile to fathers and husbands that it is causing young men to develop an aversion to marriage because, whatever the moral virtues of marriage, legally it has become a nearly insane risk for them to take.”
Well, there is an aversion to marriage because the concept is being cheapened. I doubt aversion is the best way to put it. More like, who cares?
Once society no longer discriminates to afford special recognition to the sorts of relationships that tend best to replenish a healthy work population, then we more quickly become like Italy and other European countries, failing to replenish populations, in danger of soon being overrun by other cultures.
So, it is hardly without reason for a society to wish to confer more favorable tax incentives on those sorts of relationships that most tend to replenish a healthy, socially responsible work force.
But, why do leftists, libertarians, and bluebloods (“LLB’s”) think it such a great thing that a country or culture should idly preside over its own disintegration? An odd sense about LLB’s — do they not tend to be so tolerant as not even to notice when someone else is “chewing off their arms,” so to speak? Do LLB’s ever sense (before catastrophe, I mean) when the time for tolerance is over?
A small part of my posted comment was responsive to yours. Most was for “KP-type” bluebloods. However, assuming you side with them on social issues, I should say that I doubt Gay activists want a “right” to “marry” because they are being deprived of anything they could not achieve with a contract or civil union.
Rather, I suspect they mainly want to force the rest of society to recognize or say that they are “normal.” More than anything, Gays want their behavior “normalized.”
Now, educated social conservatives do not especially care what Gays do in their bedrooms. But we do care when some group uses mob tactics (and purchased politicians and judges) to try to force us, and schools, to bless to our children all manner of behavior as being “normal.”
I know you will say there is no slippery slope, that you and society will surely draw a line when polyamorists point to the Gay marriage example and demand their own “equal rights,” and that the lecher class will surely be stopped from lowering the age of children they prey upon (even though schools will already have been used to ready such children to the normality of it all), and that Nambla (you know, the running “joke” with Stewart and Colbert?) would not be allowed to follow.
But, you know what? I do not believe you.
After all, it is not like there are not cultures that do practice such things. And why should you, as a sophisticated, cosmopolitan libertarian, ever think to interfere with the “diversity rights” of whatever culture may next swamp us?
But, humor me — if you do have spine to accept the burden of proof before advocating a violent change in historical American notions about marriage, please draw a line of argument or empirical evidence against polygamous marriage and polyamory. Please, do share.
Until then, I remain of the opinion that Gay marriage (at least when solemnized and favored by government with tax incentives) is a slippery slope — an unnecessary, unhelpful, fundamental (i.e., not minor) danger.
Simply put, the notion cheapens traditional marriage, against which there is already too much aversion for the safe replenishment of American society.
So far, most voters agree. And there is little reason to suppose that most young voters, once a few years away from their sophisticated professors, will not be educable to agree.
Bottom line: LLB’s are far more concerned to try to “educate” Social Conservatives than Social Conservatives are with keeping Bluebloods in the party. If Gay marriage is the issue deemed important enough to send Bluebloods running to Obama, then I, for one, am content that their masks are off.
