...not That Theres Anything Wrong With That

You have to hand it to the gay marriage proponents: they know how to frame a debate. They have forced their opponents into trying to explain why they don’t want “rights” for gays and lesbians--or essentially conceding that they are bigots. On the other hand, it is sadly transparent that many opponents of gay marriage are barely able to mask their disdain for gays and lesbians.

However, as Andrew Gelman convincingly wrote on this site, an enormous swath of Americans, particularly the young, have ambivalent feelings about what rights should be accorded homosexuals. There is plainly no broad consensus for gay marriage (See, Prop. 8 in California), but neither do Americans want homosexuals to be social pariahs.

The combination of the above spells political opportunity for the GOP and conservatives. But if we do not speak to a broader range of Americans, we risk losing access to a place at the table in crafting the sensible, moral compromises that we will have to in the coming years.

Some starting points:

First, while there is no reason for conservatives to drop their opposition to gay marriage, even based in part on religious grounds, we have to speak in broader societal terms than the purely religious. Evangelical leaders need to go read the likes of Calvin and Luther who, though reared in environments of deep entwinement between church and state, nonetheless differentiated between the City of God and City of Man: believers can/should/must labor in both, but the latter is not designed to accomplish the goals of the former.

Second, conservatives (particularly religious conservatives who claim to believe in the inherent dignity of each human) must find opportunities to speak out against crimes against homosexuals here and abroad: There is every reason for us to support, for instance, gays in Iran who face execution. We could send a powerful message that while we distinguish between different types of behavior, we don’t distinguish between types of people.

Third, while we should oppose Title VII-style workplace protections for homosexuals, we could lend support for certain protective measures in exchange for compromises like exempting religious institutions and schools.

Fourth, it is outrageous that any American is not able to designate whomever they want to make final medical decisions, whether that decider is gay or straight. Such decisions get to the heart of human autonomy, and each should be left to choose whom they think most appropriate.

What does all this give us? Earned moral authority. Not in the eyes of the likes of The New York Times or The Advocate, but in those of the majority of Americans who do not hate gays and lesbians, who want to see them have certain rights, but who are not at all comfortable with total moral, practical, and political equivalence between gay and straight lifestyles. By taking a more reasoned conservative approach, we could remove perhaps the most powerful weapon in the Democrats’ social arsenal and live to fight another day. If we don’t, we risk losing any say in one of the most important fronts in the culture war.

And there is something wrong with that.