MARRIAGE AND THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY.

Jeff Jacoby


Thousands of Americans will rally in
Washington, D.C., at a March for Marriage on
Thursday in support of "the simple and
beautiful message," to quote Brian Brown ,
that "marriage between one man and one
woman is unique and critical for our
society." Brown is president of the National
Organization for Marriage, the event's lead
sponsor.
Don't he and his supporters know that they're
on the Wrong Side of History?
These days, of course, anyone who publicly
opposes same-sex marriage can expect to be
scorned in many quarters as a bigot or
reviled as an ignoramus . No Democrat with
serious political ambitions would dare to
agree with Brown's traditional point of view.
In some places the same is increasingly true
of Republicans .
Yet until about 10 minutes ago, in historical
terms, the traditional understanding of
marriage as the complementary union of
male and female was anything but
controversial. Brown's "simple and beautiful
message," now seen as so threatened that it
needs to be defended at Washington rallies,
was about as mainstream a position as there
was in American life.
"Marriage has got historic, religious, and
moral content that goes back to the beginning
of time," said Hillary Clinton in 2000 , "and I
think a marriage is, as a marriage has always
been, between a man and a woman." Even
after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial
Court ruled that legal objections to same-sex
marriage were irrational, many liberals stood
pat. Leading Democratic presidential
candidates in 2004 — John Kerry , John
Edwards ,Joseph Lieberman, Dick Gephardt —
ran as gay-marriage opponents. So did
Clinton and Barack Obama in 2008.
Has there ever been an issue so elemental on
which the tide turned so swiftly?
Same-sex marriage is now lawful in more
than one-third of the states, and the US
Supreme Court ruled last year that such
marriages must be recognized by the federal
government. In recent months a flurry of
lower-court rulings have struck down state
bans on same-sex marriage. And there are
predictions of a Supreme Court ruling next
year that will knock over the remaining
dominoes, legalizing gay marriage in all 50
states .
Overnight, same-sex marriage has gone from
all-but-unthinkable to all-but-unstoppable. So
what do those marchers in Washington think
they're going to accomplish? Don't they have
better things to do with their lives than fight
for a cause that, if not yet entirely lost, is
surely down for the count?
Why don't they wake up and smell the
historical inevitability?
It would certainly be easier to make peace
with the new order, especially considering
the aggressiveness and hostility that many
"marriage equality" activists deploy against
those who oppose gay marriage.
Then again, much the same could have been
said a century ago to those who insisted — in
the depths of Jim Crow — that the cause of
civil rights and racial fairness was worth
fighting for. They too must have heard with
regularity that they were on the "wrong side
of history." The promise of Reconstruction
was long gone. In much of the country, black
enfranchisement was a dead letter. The
Supreme Court had ruled 7-1 in Plessy v.
Ferguson that racial segregation — "separate
but equal" — was constitutional. The
president of the United States was a white
supremacist on whose watch black employees
were fired from government positions, and
public facilities in Washington were
segregated.
Honorable voices argued that blacks had no
realistic option but to make the best of bad
situation. But there were others who insisted
that the lost spirit of abolitionism could be
revived, that Jim Crow could be fought and
eventually overturned, that "separate but
equal" was based on a falsehood and would
ultimately prove untenable. They founded the
NAACP in 1909, launching a movement that
would eventually transform America.
Gay activists see their crusade for same-sex
marriage as another civil-rights battle. It's a
false analogy. Jim Crow deprived black
Americans of rights they were already
entitled to — rights enshrined in the 14th and
15th Amendments, then stolen away after
Reconstruction. But gay marriage does not
restore lost rights; it redefines "marriage" to
mean something wholly unprecedented in
human society.
History is littered with causes and beliefs that
were thought at one point to be historically
unstoppable, from the divine right of kings to
worldwide Marxist revolution . In the relative
blink of an eye, same-sex marriage has made
extraordinary political and psychological
gains. It is on a roll, winning hearts and
minds as well as court cases. No wonder it
seems to so many that history's verdict is in,
and same-sex marriage is here to stay.
Maybe it is.
Or maybe a great national debate about the
meaning of marriage is not winding down,
but just gearing up. And maybe those
marchers in Washington, with their "simple
and beautiful message," will prove to be not
bitter-enders who didn't know when to quit,
but defenders of a principle that history,
eventually, will vindicate.