Andrew Sullivan’s post, in response to Douthat, said far better.

“Ross is at his most Catholic today in his column on marriage equality, and I’d like to start a response by saying that he has conceded many secular points: that the life-long, monogamous heterosexual nuclear family is not natural and it is not the default definition of marriage in world history. Abandoning these defunct arguments – defunct because they are transparently untrue – is a helpful throat-clearing for which I’m most grateful.

“Ross’ core argument is that “lifelong heterosexual monogamy at its best can offer something distinctive and remarkable — a microcosm of civilization, and an organic connection between human generations — that makes it worthy of distinctive recognition and support.” I’m going to repeat what I have said before: I don’t disagree with this at all. I remain in awe of the heterosexual life-long coupling that produces new human life. There is a miraculous, sacred, awe-inspiring aspect to it. I understand why this is a Sacrament, and have no interest in being included in such a Sacrament since it is premised on the very Thomist arguments Ross puts forward…

“And – this is my main point – Ross’ argument simply ignores the existence and dignity and lives and testimony of gay people. This is strange because the only reason this question has arisen at all is because the visibility of gay family members has become now so unmissable that it cannot be ignored. Yes, marriage equality was an idea some of us innovated. But it was not an idea plucked out of the sky. It was an attempt to adapt to an already big social change: the end of the homosexual stigma, the emergence of gay communities of great size and influence and diversity, and collapse of the closet. It came from a pressing need as a society to do something about this, rather than consign gay people to oblivion or marginalization or invisibility. More to the point, it emerged after we saw what can happen when human beings are provided no structure, no ideal, and no support for responsibility and fidelity and love.”

Read the entire entry.

Thoughtful article by Ross Douthat, a conservative Millennial with a traditional view on marriage. This is absolutely the most refreshing pro-traditional marriage column I’ve read in the wake of Judge Walker’s Perry v. Schwarzenegger decision.  But I still disagree.

Specifically, with two points at the end of Douthat’s peice:

“In this landscape, gay-marriage critics who fret about a slippery slope to polygamy miss the point. Americans already have a kind of postmodern polygamy available to them. It’s just spread over the course of a lifetime, rather than concentrated in a “Big Love”-style menage.

If this newer order completely vanquishes the older marital ideal, then gay marriage will become not only acceptable but morally necessary. The lifelong commitment of a gay couple is more impressive than the serial monogamy of straights. And a culture in which weddings are optional celebrations of romantic love, only tangentially connected to procreation, has no business discriminating against the love of homosexuals.

But if we just accept this shift, we’re giving up on one of the great ideas of Western civilization: the celebration of lifelong heterosexual monogamy as a unique and indispensable estate. That ideal is still worth honoring, and still worth striving to preserve. And preserving it ultimately requires some public acknowledgment that heterosexual unions and gay relationships are different: similar in emotional commitment, but distinct both in their challenges and their potential fruit.

But based on Judge Walker’s logic — which suggests that any such distinction is bigoted and un-American — I don’t think a society that declares gay marriage to be a fundamental right will be capable of even entertaining this idea.”

First: As a proponent of marriage equality I value monogamy.  Douthat’s assertion that by making “this shift” as he calls it, that we are giving up the ideal of lifelong heterosexual monogamy is simply wrong.  There is nothing that says the ideal of lifelong heterosexual monogamy can’t, and shouldn’t be maintained, nor that it can’t co-exist alongside the acceptance and ideal of homosexual monogamy.  The ideal of monogamy is what serves as the more important societal stabilizer, not the sexual orientations of the couple.

Second: I’ve read Judge Walker’s opinion. It states that these relationships (hetero- and homo-sexual marriages) should be viewed the same in the eyes of the law, but the opinion does not speak to the distinctions “in their challenges and their potential fruit” because it’s not the judge’s place to characterize those distinctions.  Having been at the trial and read the transcripts, there was precious little in the trial (especially from the defense charged with arguing against marriage equality) that set out to characterize those distinctions, upon which Walker might have commented in his decision.  Culture can find a way to distinguish and characterize the differences in same-sex and opposite-sex marriages, but the law ought not.  That’s the point of equality in the eyes of the law.  Walker never uses the words bigoted or un-American once in his decision.  Douthat flirts with characterizing the judge as a radical in the last sentence (which he is not, and which Douthat surely knows, which is why I suppose he goes no further than this flirtation).

This isn’t 1935, when 77 Republicans voted for Social Security.  It’s not 1965, when 66 Republicans supported Medicare.

In 2010, the excesses of the social welfare state are well known and understood to all Americans except the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, which controls Congress.  After muscling the largest federal expansion through Congress in forty years by only three votes, despite having at 75 member majority, Republicans have just lost a battle, but we may be winning the war.

More from my post on The Daily Beast today.