[Puppage]

Doing so would strengthen marriage as an institution

No. Doing so would invalidate it, and make it an abomination. IMHO

[metalboy]

I`ll insist on it when I can watch it without puking.

[putupon]

[DManA]

This again proves how completely liberals misunderstand conservatives. They have no concept of where we're coming from. Suppose that's a tactical advantage. We understand them completely.

[HarleyD]

"The conservative course is not to banish gay people from making such commitments. It is to expect that they make such commitments. We shouldn't just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage."

I love it when liberals pretend to sound conservative. They never do a good job. This is one example. It's always obvious because they try to tell YOU how YOU should think.

[Deep_6]

Re:
"....Marriage joins two people in a sacred bond. It demands that they make
an exclusive commitment to one another...."

Under law, it absolutely should be permitted. There is no legal reason to
deny any two people making a lifelong commitment the benefits others
making the same commitment receive, simply because they meet a religious
description of "marriage".

 If a lesbian female can marry a homosexual male; if we allow jailed
death-row prisoners to take vows of marriage; if we do not reject any
marriage under any other circumstances as long as both are of opposite
sex, then we are disallowing with hypocrisy and prejudice, Constitutional
rights and justice for all those of same-sex commitments

[JesseHousman]

GAY MARRIAGE Conservatives

Oxymoron.

[Kerberos]

I'm not going to read the article because these things usually make me nauseas. But the thing I have never understood is why does anyone need permission from the government to get married? To me, that is the real issue that needs to be addressed.

[The_Victor]

But marriage is the opposite. Marriage joins two people in a sacred bond. It demands that they make an exclusive commitment to one another, and thereby takes two discrete individuals and turns them into kin.

OK, let's use the definition of marriage as a vow of commitment. So if homosexuals want to commit to one another, who is stopping them?

Perhaps gay marriage is not really about pledging a troth for life, but about forced public acceptance.

[Calamari]

How is fraud, two men or two women claiming to be gay but really not, to obtain the benefits of marriage going to be prevented? (Medical,retirement,social security,etc.)

Anyone can claim to be gay. How do we separate those who are from those who are not?

[Alouette]

Marriage joins two people in a sacred bond.

That is blatant discrimination! How dare they limit marriage to only two at a time, and only to humans!!! What about Muslims who want to have 4 wives at a time? What about a man who is in love with his dog? His car? His favorite sports team? Why should "gays" be allowed to participate in marriage but not the dog lovers, car aficionados and sports fans?

[Snuffington]

Doing so would strengthen marriage as an institution and the culture of fidelity.

Blech. Such drivel.

Wow! How enlightened we've become. Suddenly we've discovered "male" and "female" are artificial, culturally constructed institutions. Now we can do away with them and join anyone at all in Holy Matrimony.

To accept this is to assume all previous generations were foolish bigots for opposing the same. I'm egotistical in my own way, but not to THAT great an extent.

Stanley Kurtz is a far better conservative thinker on the topic. He gets it in a way that may seem odd to the David Brooks' of the world, but would be common sense to scores of preceding generations.

[x]

Brooks is thinking like a 1960s liberal: Less poverty means less crime; poverty can be abolished by spreading dependence on government; more sex before marriage makes stronger marriages; abortion and birth control mean no more unwanted children; more porn will mean fewer rapes; making abortion legal and access to it widespread will make it safe and rare.

There may be some logic and empirical truth in some of these arguments, but there are enough contradictory indications and unintended side-effects to suggest that the connections aren't as clear as 1960s liberals believed they would be. So it is with Brooks's argument today. It looks very naive.

Brooks is ahead of the curve, but it looks like other neoconservatives will follow him to something not so far different from the Rockefeller-Lindsay liberal Republicanism of a previous generation -- the complacent and naive ideology of the upper class. Given that so many of the younger neo-con's actual and spiritual parents were Kennedy-Johnson Democrats it's not so far a trip.