Voters Say Gay is Not OK

The big news of Election 2009 is a resurgent conservative movement.  "Change" is the order of the day - Change last year, and more Change this year.

There's one major issue, however, that has not changed: American voters from sea to shining sea do not think that the government should dignify homosexual liasons with the name of "marriage."

The interesting thing about this debate is how different it is from most other issues.  From taxes to abortion, the major hot-button national concerns each have their state bastions.

South Dakota would outlaw abortion entirely if it could; Illinois happily permits it right up until the moment of birth, and arguably even afterwards.  The actual laws in place don't fully reflect the views of the constituents because the Supreme Court doesn't permit them to, but differences in public opinion are deep and profound.

Not so with homosexual marriage!  Yes, there are individual localites that strongly feel the gender mix of a marriage is irrelevant, as San Francisco famously demonstrated.

To the pundits' surprise, however, even that most liberal of states, California as a whole, voted against homosexual marriage when the people were given a chance to do so via Proposition 8.  And Prop 8 was the second time around, the first time had the same result but was rejected by activist judges who prefer their opinions to the will of the people.

In every state where the voters have been given the opportunity to express their will directly, without a single exception, that will is always the same no matter how conservative or liberal they might otherwise be: marriage is one thing and homosexuality is quite another.  Those states which permit homosexual marriage do so by judicial fiat, as in Massachusetts, or by vote of elected representatives as in New Hampshire.

Actually, Massachusetts provides a cautionary example: a heavily-supported referendum on the subject was killed by the legislature, in clear contradiction of the state Constitution.  Alas, the court which would rule on the constitutional violation was the same court that created the problem in the first place; the view of the voters was not so much flouted as actively suppressed.

Once again, we see a socially liberal state finding that, when it comes right down to it, marriage is one of those things that should be left alone: The State of Maine chalks up another referendum victory, overruling the legislature, Governor, and courts on the subject.

In the teary-eyed liberal media reports, a fascinating observation shines through.  One dejected would-be participant in a homosexual union had this to say about the result:

It's a personal rejection of us and our relationship.

Quite so - and the sooner the far left realizes it, the better.  Nobody on any side of the political spectrum wishes harm to homosexuals; nobody significant believes that the police should be bashing in doors of consenting adults.  But there's a big difference between believing that private consensual homosexual behavior is not the proper purview of government - which pretty much everybody agrees with nowadays - versus requiring that such unions be celebrated and honored by one and all under force of law.

Really, it's the flip side of the "leave me alone" theory of government.  People of the homosexual persuasion had a point when they wanted government out of their lives and bedrooms; we can all sympathize there.  People of the religious persuasion have an equal point when they say that they do not wish to be forced to participate, aid, abet, or respect actions that their religion finds abhorrent.

Why can't we just leave each other alone?  If we could do that, everybody should be mostly content.

The more the far left and the extremist homosexual activists try to push their agenda down the throats of voters, they will discover that there are a lot more religious voters than homosexual ones - and that, to the vast middle ground, ministers and the devout are rather more sympathetic than Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno Gehard prancing and singing, "We're here, we're queer, get used to it!"

If they were wise, liberal homosexuals would take their gains and leave the political forefront.  That they don't demonstrates the true nature of liberalism: it's not enough that people be free to go your own way, everyone must be forced to treat all ways as equal whether they like it or not.  If everything is equally valid and acceptable and above any sort of criticism... then nothing is, and we have no freedom at all.

Is that the liberals' true agenda?  To force us all into the tyranny of permitting no moral standards, religious rules, or societal preferences whatsoever?