Perusing the many reactions of social conservatives to the nationwide legalization of gay marriage, I have some degree of sympathy for their fear that their sincerely held religious beliefs will be infringed somehow, either legally or just through brutal cultural suppression.
But what I find more troubling is their total silence about why people have decided that it’s wrong to deny gay couples the right to get married, adopt kids, be parents, and otherwise enjoy the same rights as other committed heterosexual couples. After all, there are still moral judgments about certain sexual behaviors, like destructive promiscuity and coercion, that are untouched by the Supreme Court’s decision. What people are doing is taking into consideration that people don’t control either same-sex or opposite-sex attraction. Kids these days simply don’t think there is a moral failing involved in being attracted to people of your own gender, nor do they think there is any virtue in abstinence outside of the intent to reproduce children. In other words, there’s a biological understanding of human sexuality that doesn’t give license to people to act any way they want sexually, but does allow them to have same-sex relationships if that is what they want. And it doesn’t wrongly insist that it’s healthier to suppress and deny your feelings and impulses than to express them freely and then act responsibly about them.
The social conservatives act like the motivation here is to marginalize their beliefs or to destroy religion, but it is really so much simpler than that. This is really about accepting people for who they are and not stigmatizing them for being different.
