On Not Opposing Gay Marriage
William Saletan on how to sell gay marriage: “Bush and his allies are the only ones trying to stop anybody from getting married. That's the first point to make in rebutting them. Next, you explain that what you care about isn't sexual orientation but marriage. You allude to the reasons we value marriage: commitment, stability, fidelity, community.”
That list is inexhaustive: many people marry for financial and strategic reasons. That may fit under the "stability" category, but up until recently in Western history, marriage was, in some respects, a joining of families in economic or political terms. The financial reason does not necessarily have to have a bad connotation (e.g. gold-digger, sugar-mommy, etc.): people get together in holy matrimony because when you want to purchase something large—say, a house—oftentimes two incomes is better than one. Some also marry for strategic reasons, say the kings of various countries marrying off their children to the children of kings of foreign powers.
I don't object to gay marriage—it's a little hard for me to approve of it, being heterosexual and all, but I don't oppose it either. The point Saletan is making, though, is that gay marriage may need to be defended not in terms of liberal values (freedom of choice, freedom of sexual orientation, etc.) but rather in conservative terms ("family values"). Social liberals will need to use a conservative argument to convince conservatives, who will never approve of gay marriage, not to oppose it.
