Across the country today, homosexuals demonstrated in reaction to the passage of Proposition 8 in California, a constitutional amendment that reads, "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." The ballot amendment was precipitated by a California Supreme Court decision that granted homosexuals the right to marry.
To my knowledge, prior to the last decade, homosexual marriage has never been recognized by any society in human history. Here in the United States, no legislature has ever voted to establish homosexual marriage. So I think that gay activists make a serious mistake when they try to demonize everyone who opposes their agenda as a "scary bigot."
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On a personal level, I have a lot of sympathy for Mr. Merrill. But his framing of the issue–people pass laws that take away rights–expresses what I think is the illogical approach taken by most gay leaders. In fact, what gays are trying to do is create a brand-new right, a right that has never existed before, to homosexual marriage.
The problem faced by the gay marriage movement is that most people are opposed to gay marriage. Seeing this as a mere inconvenience, gays have sought "redress" in the courts, and some liberal state supreme courts have obliged, finding gay marriage to be, on one theory or another, a "civil right." California's Proposition 8 and similar measures have arisen solely in response to such rulings. They don't "take away rights," they restore the status quo ante with respect to "rights" that were never democratically recognized in the first place.
The value of gay marriage is mostly symbolic: homosexuals want their fellow citizens to approve of their lifestyle. Currently, there seems to be a pretty good chance that this will happen before long, for better or worse. But such acceptance is more likely retarded than advanced by the activists' strategy of litigation plus demonstrations.
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