Protecting marriage

The New York Times' David E. Kirkpatrick provided some of the creepier details about Ohio's ballot measure banning same-sex marriage and civil unions:

The strongest argument that Christian conservatives played a decisive role in the election came in Ohio, where a ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage passed by an overwhelming margin. Conservatives said the proposal increased conservative turnout and helped Mr. Bush win a narrow, pivotal victory.

Phil Burress, the veteran Christian conservative organizer who headed the effort to pass the measure, said his campaign registered tens of thousands of voters, distributed 2.5 million church bulletin inserts and passed out 20,000 yard signs. His group called 2.9 million homes, he said, identifying 850,000 strong supporters whom it called again on Monday as a reminder to go to the polls.

The most disturbing nugget there is probably the 20,000 yard signs. Think about that: 20,000 people so riled up about their opposition to civil unions that they wanted to stake a sign in their front lawns. There may not be 20,000 same-sex couples in all of Ohio looking to get married, but there are 20,000 people who considered this issue of prime importance during the election.

What on earth did those yard signs say?

If they were honest, they would have said something Fred Phelpsian — something that captured the essence of Ohio's campaign against gay couples, like "God hates your kind of love" or "Legal limits on love. Vote yes."

But the yard signs — like the whole Ohio campaign and the entire presidential race — probably weren't that honest. They likely didn't present their explicit prejudice quite so explicitly. They likely used the same generic, innocuous-seeming euphemism of "protecting marriage."

Who would argue against "protecting marriage"? Even those of us who've had unpleasant experiences with the institution recognize that marriage itself, in the abstract, is not to blame.

I you can successfully frame any campaign as a vote for or against "marriage," you're bound to win with an overwhelming majority. Even if the substance of the vote has little or nothing to do with being for or against marriage itself.

This is one of the big lessons that the radical clerics, the American ayatollahs and the other enemies of freedom have learned from their successful campaigns in 11 states to "protect marriage" from the pink menace of same-sex love.

And they're not nearly done yet. As the AP's David Crary reports, they've only just gotten started limiting freedom with a list of proposals sold under the name of "protecting marriage."

"When you talk about protecting marriage, you need to talk about divorce,'' said Bryce Christensen, a Southern Utah University professor who writes frequently about family issues.

While Christensen doesn't oppose the campaign to enact state and federal bans on gay marriage, he worries it's distracting from immediate threats to marriage's place in society.

"If those initiatives are part of a broader effort to reaffirm lifetime fidelity in marriage, they're worthwhile,'' he said. "If they're isolated — if we don't address cohabitation and casual divorce and deliberate childlessness — then I think they're futile and will be brushed aside.''

Christenson wants legislative initiatives to "address cohabitation." That would likely involve rewriting your lease, your local zoning laws, tax structure and EEOC rules. But even all that wouldn't be as intrusive and frightening as his concern about "deliberate childlessness," which sounds like something from A Handmaid's Tale.

I'm not sure how Christenson arrives at the idea that "deliberate childlessness" is somehow a threat to marriage, but consider what might be involved in any "initiative" to fight it. Christenson apparently wants to overturn Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court ruling that reaffirmed the right to marital privacy and struck down state laws banning the use of birth control.

The court's argument in that decision had to do with the right to privacy — a right that folks like Christenson and Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., have argued is an unconstitutional myth. Santorum and Christenson call themselves "conservative," but any policy restricting "deliberate childlessness" would require an expansive, intrusive increase in government — inviting its regulatory and police powers to take jurisdiction over the most intimate decisions of married couples.

In the name of "protecting marriage," Christenson would create the mirror-image of China's one-child policy. Yet he tosses off such ideas nonchalantly, realizing that no one will pay attention to the fascist details of his agenda as long as he glosses them over with the rhetorical sheen of "marriage protection."