Let’s step back a minute and take stock of our society now that some gay couples have been given the right to get married.
It’s been almost four months since the Massachusetts high court cleared the way for gay marriages in the Bay State. Since then, we’ve seen cities in New Mexico, California, New York, and Oregon get in on the fun.
To hear conservatives tell it, gay marriage undermines the fabric of society. Indeed, as Rick “Man on Dog” Santorum recently told TV preacher Pat Robertson, if gay couples are allowed to get married, straight couples will stop getting married.
So, here we are, a few months and a few thousand weddings later. Are the pillars of American society in tact? Have our families deteriorated because of the “confusion” about what marriage is? At the risk of confusing my conservative friends, I’m afraid I have no bad news to share.
San Francisco-based writer Mark Morford has been on the front lines of this burgeoning culture war, and yet, he’s seen no evidence to confirm right wing fears. And believe me, he’s been looking.
I have been waiting patiently.
I have been staring with great anticipation out the window of my flat here in the heart of San Francisco, sighing heavily, waiting for the riots and the plagues and the screaming monkeys and the blistering rain of inescapable hellfire. I have my camera all ready and everything.
There has been nothing. I see only some lovely trees and a stunning blue sky and my neighbor walking by with her pair of matching chow chows as a pained-looking woman struggles to parallel park her SUV. Same old, same old.
And this is San Francisco, gay-marriage HQ, Sodom-and-Gomorrahville, debauchery central. We are supposed to be careening off the nice, safe road of social acceptability right now, welcoming chaos, exploding into a fiery hellmist of our own sick godless depravity and dropping off the disgusted planet any minute now.
Where is my raging apocalypse? This is what I want to know. Where is the social meltdown? The moral depravity? I was promised an apocalypse, dammit. What am I supposed to do with all these tubs of margarine and confetti and kazoos?
Morford has heard the conservative fears, but he’s not terribly impressed.
“It’s anarchy,” some guy named Rick Forcier, of the Washington state chapter of the Christian Coalition, actually whined. “We seem to have lost the rule of law. It’s very frightening when every community decides what laws they will obey.” Why, yes, Rick. It’s total anarchy. Just look at all the screaming and the bloodshed and the gunfire. Run and hide, Rick. The gay people in love are coming. And they’ve got tattoos and funny haircuts and want to get married and celebrate their love and be left alone. Hide the children.
This was — and still is — very much the right-wing sentiment. It was almost a guarantee: Same-sex marriage spelled the instantaneous end of all that is good and righteous and edible. Insurrection was imminent, apocalypse nigh. You could see it in their eyes — they could hardly wait.
Morford also helps out with some handy Bible verses to share with your friends who believe Scripture should be used to dictate the legal definitions of family.
Like this: “Marriage shall not impede a man’s right to take multiple concubines in addition to his wife or wives.” (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21).
Or maybe: “A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be stoned to death.” (Deut 22:13-21) Isn’t that cute? Isn’t quoting Bible verse fun? Ask your local pastor about that one.
Or how about: “If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother’s widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law.” (Gen. 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10). Hey, it’s right there, in the Bible. So it must be true.