Everyone is asking me: What does DADT repeal mean for the gay-marriage debate? I will tell you: I don’t know.
I’ve always believed that marriage is a distinctive issue, that it cannot simply be folded into “gay issues” generally, that it’s quite possible to be pro–gay rights generally and still to support marriage as the union of husband and wife.
Well, yeah, if it’s 1994 and stuff. Is it?
However, the inability of those who opposed DADT repeal to kill this bill in the lame duck, even in light of the strong opposition to repeal from troops in the field, is an example of the growing mismatch in culture power — the power to name reality, the power to determine which stories get told and whose feelings count.
When the 58 percent of Marines putting their lives on the line for this country who say “this is going to make our life harder” have so little weight in public debate…
Oh, Maggie, almost 80% of the American public supports repeal, and that 58% Marine number was a complete outlier in a wide-ranging study that showed that the majority of the military, especially the young ones, truly do not care about serving with openly gay people. Your readers may be stupid, but jeez.
So anyway, Maggie thinks we’ll have gays serving openly but “protect marriage” all the same because
I can’t really believe we are going to end up like Europe. But then I’m an optimist.
An optimist about upholding discrimination. Put that on her tombstone, please: “Maggie Gallagher was an optimist when it came to upholding irrational discrimation.” But please, Lord, not any time soon; grant her a long life so that she may see her life’s work crumble in front of her eyes.
