Ross Douthat: The Terms of Our Surrender - A Response

Two main themes of Mr. Douthat’s lament need address.  The first is the misrepresentation of what is being asked of those "still committed to the older view of marriage". In tired, ill-conceived language he portrays those folks as losing something or "watching their views diminish" or having to "promote their views" apparently in a live-or-die struggle with some other view. This is simply not the case. Holders of traditional views on marriage are not being asked to give up anything. They are only being asked to include a group of people historically ignored or shunned.

Imagine me with a document in hand. “Look here guys, this is your traditional definition of marriage all written out. Oh, and now because we are wiser, we’ll add an addendum to your definition to include the gay and lesbian community. We’ll put it down here. But see there, in the paragraphs that proceed? Your definition still exists! Why, its not changed at all. You still have every thing you’ve had before. You haven’t had to give up a thing.”

Say I’m a business owner and I have a dress code for work. It has been around a long time. It’s traditional you might say. But times are changing and I have younger folks starting to work in the office. I decide to expand the dress code. Everything that used to be acceptable still is but now employees can also wear dark jeans and loafers. Some of the old timers frown. They prefer to see people in suits. They still wear suits and encourage others to do the same. They have not lost their right to prefer and promote suits but they now must include people who wear jeans and loafers as legitimate office workers properly dressed because the company changed the code to adjust to the times. That’s all. No loss, just inclusion.

            Mr. Douthat continues the canard that there is a losing of marriage or a diminishing of marriage or a discontinuation of marriage when none of this is true. There is an expansion of marriage and an end of exclusion, nothing more.

            The second theme is trickier to be sure but boils down to conflicting rights and the role of government as arbiter of that conflict. Once the sauce of confusion is reduced and the arguments coagulate we see quite clearly that equal protection must trump religious expression freedoms.  The protection from discrimination, long overdue the minority gay and lesbian community, must be forced upon a reluctant majority religious community that will not do the right thing but perforce. This has held true in all civil rights struggles. As a business owner I have sympathy for the inherent conflict that may arise from being constrained from refusing service to a protected class of citizen. Since I routinely refuse to remodel any republicans’ abode (jest) I count myself lucky that I can legally do that. But I know I cannot draw a similar line when it comes to Jews or Blacks or Gays or Disabled or Women because the law says that just isn’t kosher. I can live with that as a small price to pay for living in a civil society where minorities are protected from the tyranny of the majority, especially a religious one, a specter the founding fathers feared for good reason.