Tuesday Matrimonial Train Wreck Open Comments

Matthew Schmitz at First Things elucidates fundamental changes occurring before and after the legalization of same-sex marriage in the United States.  His insights are clear and in no way comprehensive regarding the fallout on this assault on the most essential of institutions. Nor does Schmitz make such a claim because it would take far more than a single article to cover such an issue.

HOW GAY MARRIAGE CHANGED AMERICA

In November 2022, the ACLU’s deputy director for transgender justice came out against gay marriage. “I find it disappointing how much time and resources went into fighting for inclusion in the deeply flawed and fundamentally violent institution of civil marriage,” Chase Strangio wrote on Instagram. Two months later, Taylor Silverman, a female skateboarder who gained prominence after objecting to the inclusion of biological males in women’s athletic competitions, criticized gay marriage from the opposite direction: “I used to think gay marriage was ok until all of the things that conservatives warned us would happen next actually happened. Now it seems it really was the beginning of the dangerous slippery slope.” With the passage of the Respect for Marriage Act in 2022, the legal status of same-sex marriage has never been more secure. Public opinion is strongly in its favor, even as, not so long ago, it was overwhelmingly opposed. Yet the ideological case for same-sex marriage seems strangely fragile, subject to challenge on both the left and the right.

The movement to legalize same-sex marriage gave birth to many ugly things, one of which was the hideous practice of canceling individuals by pitching them onto the 21st century equivalent of witch burning fires.

Gay marriage was the first great triumph of cancel culture. Sasha Issenberg, a historian of gay marriage, has observed that by deploying the novel weapons of “shaming and shunning,” activists “changed the economic terrain on which cultural conflict was waged.” One of the early breakthroughs occurred when eightmaps.com appeared online. The site used information gathered under financial disclosure laws to list the names and locations of people who had donated to California’s Proposition 8, a referendum that stated marriage could take place only between a man and a woman. Suddenly American citizens came under pressure for their political views—not just from their friends and families, but potentially from anyone with an internet connection. Some reported receiving envelopes with powder and death threats.

plus this,

When rainbow colors were ­projected onto the White House, the symbolism was broader than the celebration of any one Supreme Court decision. It was a sign that something fundamental had changed about the country, that an older order, symbolized by the stars and stripes, had given way to a new one that marched under the rainbow banner. This regime rejects neutrality as it seeks to inscribe its political priorities in American law. Religious freedom, due process, and equal treatment before the law must all yield before the imperative of inclusion. If the expression of certain views makes members of protected groups uncomfortable, those views must be silenced. If legal norms cause an insufficient number of cases of sexual harrassment or rape to result in conviction, the norms must be abandoned. Christianity famously introduced a distinction between the sacred and secular realm, differentiating the things that belong to God from those that belong to Caesar. The new American regime has collapsed this distinction, creating a system in which full citizenship is closely tied to right belief.