No connection with Israel, except there used to be boatloads of posts that out of the closet gays in the military would cause the institution to go down the drain more or less.
The attenuated connection with Israel however is that perhaps folks just have a certain animus and angst about gays qua gays, that colors their thinking and objectivity. And that is their right. We all have our own aesthetic and moral "prejudices." The trick is to try to keep them house broken, and sufficiently leashed, that they don't become unmanageable, more for one's inner serenity, than anyone else, but also to keep the public square reasonably rational and able to cope with divergent prejudices and aesthetic preferences without excreting an undue amount of toxicity.
Well said. Understood and agreed. I can find no fault with this. I would add:
1. we can never identify all prejudices in ourselves or others
2. prejudices can be to the good.
Now, on the subject of my own positions on gay marriage. (Please take this as not coming on too strong, if possible.)
I had no earthly reason to become a social conservative except by studying people and books. I have not believed in God since the age of 8. I was a libertarian and a libertine.
I now know that social reality is the most telling for human beings. I now know that live and let live is a virtue but not the most crucial virtue. Things matter. The disapproval that you sometimes feel from another human being at something you have done is a fundamentally crucial event in the functioning of tribe, culture, civilization. In every case, for the good and sometimes bad, that is morality at work.
Attitudes, practices, even prejudices must be passed across generations, or obviously, they will disappear. Public policy can interfere with the efficiency of this process. There is no guaranteed course of action, but we do use our intellects to guide us in our choices.
I believe live and let live is a good virtue applied to our comportment toward our gay brothers and sisters. Our culture can be damaged by turmoil, but gay issues is not an area that will be a death blow by any stretch. There are a whole host of gay issues on which I have opinions and they are not always consistent. For example, I think it must be admitted that the visceral discomfort folks feel on the subject of gay marriage may have an important value to the continued health of our civilization.
The special legal status of marriage, inherited from and connected to the traditional kind, owes its existence to its salutary effects. One aspect of this is exalting the paradigm of a man and a woman uniting for life and hopefully bearing children.
The logic of the existence of the institution of marriage is not tied up in the provision of approval and satisfaction to every individual. The satisfaction and benefits provided to those who marry is a way society, as a complex adaptive process, shifts resources to individuals who are performing a key function. What could be more key than raising children in a stable family? This is a critical, critical pattern because it supports the very process of causing other valuable patterns to persist across generations.
Gay couples as a class do not fit the paradigm in a fundamental way which is recognizable to all. This is different from individual heterosexual couples who happen to be infertile, are older, do not want children, etc. The public conveyance of equal status to gay couples would cause a small but significant loss of clarity in the paradigm.
That said, I think there is room in the public wealth to aid in the adaptations of a class of individuals (gays) who are making normative life choices. But I am vehemently opposed to instituting these legalities on an equal basis to marriage. I am vehemently opposed to a blanket political correctness which requires us to act as if gay coupling as on a par with marriage.
Individuals are individuals, and they have equal rights in their pursuit of happiness. The provisions of government are not rights. Pretending they are muddies the issue of civilization survival that should be always in our minds.