Lying To Make Friends

Over the weekend, Dahlia Lithwick posted an article on Slate about the lack of courage in today’s political debate.  Specifically, she discussed the successful efforts of gay marriage opponents to keep cameras out of the courtroom in the trial over California’s Prop 8 and a recent Supreme Court case regarding whether the state of Washington could release names of signatories for a ballot referendum to strip same-sex couples of domestic partner benefits.  Even after the Supreme Court ruled that the Prop 8 trial not be broadcast, the anti-gay marriage side had to reduce its witness list, claiming witnesses were afraid of retaliation if they testified.  Lithwick rightly worries about the threat posed to democracy when citizens are unwilling to state their positions publicly.  One could also question the sincerity of the fear, since the ability to claim victim status has become a prized commodity in politics (especially amongst those with the weakest claims.)

There’s another important point to be made that’s particular to the gay marriage context.  The unwillingness of opponents of gay marriage to have their opposition made public demonstrates the hollowness of the dramatic rhetoric their movement employs.  The “why does this matter to you?” question is a difficult one for opponents of gay marriage, as Jonathan Chait demonstrated last year in The New Republic when he convincingly took apart any argument against gay marriage based on anything beyond simple discomfort with homosexuality.  As much as opponents of gay marriage talk about heterosexual marriage being the backbone of our society and the fight to protect traditional marriage as being the real civil rights battle, the unwillingness to publicly state these views when there could be reprisals shows that they are not taken seriously even within the anti-gay marriage movement.  To the extent that there are actual threats being made against opponents of gay marriage, they cannot be nearly as serious as the threats faced by Civil Rights activists in the 1960s.  But because African Americans actually had their freedom and their welfare at stake, Civil Rights leaders and activists fought for their rights in the most public ways possible, whatever the costs.  If opponents of gay marriage truly believed that allowing gay marriage would have the dire consequences they claim, there would be no shortage of brave activists willing to publicly take this stand and suffer whatever consequences may come.

-AR