Panicked by the possible legalization of gay marriage in New York State, the National Organization for Marriage went all out with a local TV spot. The load-bearing line in the spot is: “The rights of people who believe that marriage is between a man and a woman will no longer matter.”

What rights are these? A few months ago, I attempted to contact the president of NOM, Maggie Gallagher, with some questions I had about the crux of NOM’s objection to gay marriage. She curtly informed me that she had repeatedly answered those questions and that I could go to nationformarriage.org and look up their talking points. So I did.

NOM precedes the talking points with this advisory:

Extensive and repeated polling agrees that the single most effective message is: “Gays and Lesbians have a right to live as they choose, they don’t have the right to redefine marriage for all of us.” This allows people to express support for tolerance while opposing gay marriage. Some modify it to “People have a right to live as they choose, they don’t have the right to redefine marriage for all of us.” (Emphasis theirs.)

Just how does gay marriage harm heterosexual marriage? NOM has an answer for that and recommends putting it on a 3X5 card, perhaps to have it handy should a discussion of gay marriage spontaneously combust at the office water cooler:

Answer 1: “Who gets harmed? The people of this state who lose our right to define marriage as the union of husband and wife, that’s who. That is just not right.”

What right to define marriage as the union of husband and wife? Who exactly has that right and who doesn’t and why? Where does that right come from? Who bestowed it, on whom? And why is it “just not right” to take away that imaginary right?

No questions not covered by the talking points are allowed and, presumably, never get asked.

Answer 2: “If courts rule that same-sex marriage is a civil right, then, people like you and me who believe children need moms and dads will be treated like bigots and racists.”

Can’t imagine why, but of course we can’t have that. Never mind. Forget the whole thing. The wedding is off.

My questions for Ms. Gallagher were about the legitimacy of a childless marriage, such as mine, and her talking points don’t quite extend to fathoming out my personal deviancy.

This is the closest I’ve found:

“Every man and woman who marries is capable of giving any child they create (or adopt) a mother and a father. No same-sex couple can do this. It’s apples and oranges.”

Now we’re talking about fruit. It’s not really helpful to understanding why a mother-father combo is superior to a father-father or a mother-mother combo, but thanks to NOM’s impressive ability to stay on message without actually explaining why, I’ve absorbed this: Marriage is all about what’s best for the children. What’s best for the children is having a mother and a father. Therefore, marriage is about a union of a mother and a father. Lather. Don’t rinse, just more lather. Repeat. Then repeat again.

Ms. Gallagher first got her national spotlight when she took Dan Quayle’s side in the 1992 hoopla that ensued when he described the single motherhood of the TV character Murphy Brown as less than glamorous and desirable. As a single mother of 10 years at the time, Ms. Gallagher, no question, had had it rough. It would be only decent of her to advise other women against intentionally becoming single mothers, after what she had been through. Of course she wished she had a husband to help. But the leap of faith that makes her insist everyone should have a spouse but only of the opposite gender (because that’s what would work for her and her children?) seems too rooted in her own emotional baggage.

So I’ll humor her for the moment—as I would anyone whose emotional baggage is too big to be stored underneath their seat—and allow that marriage is all about what’s best for the children. I don’t like children. I’m not having any. Does that invalidate my marriage?

NOM’s flyers, thoughtfully adapted for taking to either a Protestant or a Catholic church, in English and in Spanish, or to a Jewish temple—but only in English—stress that

marriage is part of God’s original order. “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone, I will make him a help mate” [Genesis 2:18]. Jesus also affirmed that lasting, loving marriage is basic to God’s plan for us. “But from the beginning of creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife . . . What therefore God hath joined, let not man put asunder.” [Mark 10: 6, 7, 9]

(On the Jewish flyer, only the Genesis reference is used. Now that’s tolerance.) It does not mention that God said “Be fruitful and multiply,” but everybody knows He did.

There are no talking points to discuss that many gay couples are not necessarily interested in children. Instead, the talking points address such sharp questions as “Are you a bigot?”

And the answer is:

“Do you really believe people like me who believe mothers and fathers both matter to kids are like bigots and racists? I think that’s pretty offensive, don’t you? Particularly to the 60 percent of African-Americans who oppose same-sex marriage. Marriage as the union of husband and wife isn’t new; it’s not taking away anyone’s rights. It’s common sense.”

The same answer applies to two other imaginary questions: “Why do you want to take away people’s rights?” and “Isn’t it wrong to write discrimination into the constitution?”

There are no talking points to discuss that open homosexuality is a fairly new social development, and that until recently, it was still criminalized in many Western countries. All that time, indeed, the marriage between a man and a woman was the order of the day. That created a historical precedent. We’re discussing making a law out of “Because that’s the way we’ve always done things.”

We’re discussing the need to make into law, in effect, this sentiment: “Denying us the right to force the way we’ve always done things on people who want to try other things oppresses us, scares our children, and deprives us of our right to have the world the way we want it.”

H. L. Mencken wrote: “The kind of man who demands that government enforce his ideas is always the kind whose ideas are idiotic.” True, neither side is entirely innocent of making such demands, but it is the NOM’s side that demands including in the Constitution provisions for excluding a large segment of population for no good and clear reason, besides the vague but adamantly repeated “It will take away our right to define marriage and will give this right to them.” Same-sex marriage is still new and unusual, but there’s nothing in the Constitution as it stands to preclude it. Yet.

You can get pretty far, arguing that your demands are about what’s best for the children. It’s always about the children.

Should heterosexual couples have children whether they want to or not, for the sake of the survival of the species? Or at least adopt already born children, so the children can have a mother-father environment? Should raising a child be mandatory and enforced? If so, enforced by whom and how? NOM doesn’t have a plan for that. Yet.

Are there differences between heterosexual marriages in which husband and wife are physically able to have children but choose not to, and those where they are physically unable at all? Or unable to afford fertility treatments? Should the state subsidize fertility treatments? Should fertility treatments be enforced by the state?

What exactly does Ms. Gallagher plan to do about lesbians, who can bear all the children they want? Take them away and place them in a mother-father environment? Sterilize lesbians? Should they be forced to wear pink triangles, so NOM knows whom to sterilize?

Trying to prevent gay marriage does not save children from the indignity of having two parents of the same sex. It simply makes them bastards.

There’s no explanation anywhere on the NOM site about how not narrowing down the definition of marriage is bad for anyone. It’s just them or us. Either we have the right to force our worldview on them, or they do on us. Evidently, not forcing a worldview on somebody, in Ms. Gallagher’s world, is not an option.

I think that’s pretty offensive, don’t you?

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Tags: family & parenting, his & hers, on the law // 1 Comment »