Matt: “Here's my suggestion for the No on prop 36 folks: Go simple. Your new slogan is "Support Marriages. Support Families. No on 36." That's it. You don't have to explain these are new marriages or expanded definitions of family, just go with short, emotional slogans. People love marriage. People love family. A no vote on 36 means thousands of marriages don't have to be dissolved.”
That's the message of Jonathan Rauch in his book Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America. Rauch argues that gay marriages are a very conservative-friendly institution, because it will not only encourage gays to commit to one person for the rest of their lives, but that marriage means more than just one partner to have sex with (because a fifth of married men have admitted to an "indiscretion"). It means more than loving just one person (because it's possible to love more than one person). It means being the person that will guaranteed to be there if the other person's world turns upside down. It means making a contract not between each other but between them as a couple and the community around them. Rauch is saying that a couple, gay or straight, that marries is saying to the rest of the world "I had some fun but now it's time for me to settle down and become an adult". That's why I say in my thoughts about the book that it has surprisingly moderated my views on heterosexual marriage. Rauch also says that gay marriage opponents, by saying "a marriage should be between a man and a woman" are destroying marriage—which, in the vows, has more to do with loving and holding and in sickness and death than what reproductive organs the two people might have—in order to save it.
The other point Matt makes in his article is that conservatives have successfully simplified the message so much that it often "makes sense" even though the underlying ideas may not. That has been much of the appeal conservatism had for me: not so much the ideas but the rhetoric. I like nuance a lot too, and that's the force that draws me to the liberal side against the conservative pull, but for liberals to be successful politically, as Matt points out, they may have to try some of the things that made their political enemies successful as well.
